


On the Ragged Shore

by ncfan



Series: Hurt/Comfort Prompts [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Food, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other characters have minor roles, Trauma, a lot more hurt than comfort, the comfort is at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 97,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26987743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Elwing is threaded with the past and the earth and those songs that sing most loudly in her ears. The future is more difficult to see.
Relationships: Elwing & Olwë (Tolkien), Eärendil & Elwing (Tolkien), Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien)
Series: Hurt/Comfort Prompts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885060
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #74: Comfort Food
> 
> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma; food insecurity]

There is always a part of the tale of your life so early on that you cannot remember it. Though it may span only a few years, that time is so incomprehensibly vast that it dwarfs the whole array of stars above your head, invisible for as long as Anor lasts in the soaring sky. It is full of possibilities, those misty years locked behind the walls of memory, just as you were once full of possibilities. You were once something that could have been anything, and thus, your past, at the point where you can no longer remember it, could have been anything as well.

Perhaps that is being…

Hmm…

To say that you could have been _anything_ , that seems too optimistic.

Too optimistic by far.

Even in the best of all possible worlds, there are few things that Elwing could have been. Endless possibilities are for people without obligations written on their bones. Endless possibilities are for people who do not have storied blood running through their veins, or for people who have the strength and the gall to defy both bone-deep obligations and the narrative patterns of storied blood, those who can resist being swept away by both and becoming the parts that they were born to be.

Even in the best possible world, Elwing is the princess of Doriath, the younger sister of the heir (no one can ever tell her if Eluréd or Elurín was older; why is it that none of them can tell her who was older, why is it that _this_ , of all questions, must go without an answer), beloved princess, and very little else. It would have… It would have…

It would mean a great deal to Elwing, to be a princess and not a queen. She tries to imagine, sometimes, what her father must have felt when he learned that his grandfather was dead. Dior Eluchíl was acclaimed the heir of Elu Thingol all his life, but for all that Beleriand was largely a lawless and desolate place by the time he had been born, Doriath was a bastion of peace and safety and tranquil beauty, and Elu Thingol was of the deathless Edhil, blessed never to die unless some grievous wound assailed him. Dior must never have seriously expected to become his grandfather’s successor. It must have been as if the earth was falling away from under his feet.

Or so Elwing thinks. She was not quite three years old when the Kinslayers fell upon Menegroth, when the greater part of her people were slaughtered and her mother, her father, her two older brothers were consigned to graves that should never have been theirs. The bane of the Nelyar, Edhil no better than Orcs, for all that the Exiles might claim superiority over the Sindar on the basis of their having once bathed in the light of two dead trees, came and stole Elwing’s whole life from her. The only things they were unable to take away with their bloodied, grasping hands was the jewel they had done murder for in the first place, and her own heartbeat, but there are times when she wonders…

The proof of her life is proved again when she takes pinching fingers to her arm, when she trips and falls in the marsh and tears her shin open on a rock just out of sight in a small, murky pool. She is not dead. She is no houseless spirit, drifting through the Lisgardh, fooling the Edhil around her into believing her anything but a relic of a shattered world, though she often feels that way.

Elwing is alive, her father’s heir when she should never have been, her father’s successor when she should never have been. She cannot guess what her father thought when he took up a crown and a set of millstone-heavy obligations that, in a better world, would never have been his. Dior never left any writings behind on such a subject, and had he done so, they no doubt would have burned alongside Menegroth. He might have confided in Nimloth his wife, but her murder had torn out Menegroth’s heart, after Melian’s departure had left it nearly dead. Elwing must figure these things out on her own.

-

One realm in which the possibilities are decidedly less than endless is that of food. The mix of Edhil and Edain (more of the former than the latter, and there are plenty among the Iathrim who would much rather the situation involve more Edain and _considerably_ fewer Gondolindrim) clinging to the ragged edges of the land in the Lisgardh is a larger community than the area could ever hope to support. Some Iathrim have left to join the community of mixed survivors from Doriath, Nargothrond, and the Havens of the Falas on the Isle of Balar, as the island has not yet pushed quite to capacity and the fishing is rich. Some of the Gondolindrim have left Beleriand altogether, seeking out the settlement of Edhellond far to the south, and everyone allows the polite fiction that this was done for no reason other than to relieve some of the pressure on the Lisgardh. The Edain will eventually solve their own problem, if you give them enough time.

(Many would regard that as callous to say, though Elwing knows them to be lying to her when they claim to have never thought about it when they think of how food is to be rationed. It is obvious at a glance that the Edain are not the same as the Edhil. Though their bodies might seem outwardly to be composed of all the same materials, to Elwing’s eyes, their spirits could not be more different than if you were to hold a candle up next to a basin of water, and tried to pass them off as being anything like the same sort.

Short-lived Edain, doomed to die no matter what they might do to try and stave it off, and once they die, doomed to fly off beyond the Circles of the World, to go wherever it is that Lúthien went when she chose to follow Beren rather than be held in genteel captivity in the Undying Lands. Elwing need only look at them to see their spirits slowly guttering, and if the speed of their demise is different—Elwing has seen Edain children no older than herself with spirits nearly worn all the way down, spirits already trying to detach from their frail bodies—it is always reliable. The Edain will always die, given enough time.

She knows the other Edhil can see it. She knows what they have thought about it; they cannot hide these thoughts from her. Other Edhil have thought long and hard on the short-lived nature of the Edain, and Elwing knows that many of them have thought upon it with considerably less detachment than her. She knows that there are many among her people who consider Men, even the Edain who have been nothing but faithful and loyal since they first swore themselves to the service of the Edhil, to be something that just draws misfortune to the Edhil, indiscriminately. She knows that there are many among her people who breathe a sigh of relief when an Adan dies. They do not say such to her. They do not breathe such sighs of relief in front of her. But she knows. They cannot hide it from her.

Perhaps that is why they become uncomfortable with her. Or perhaps it is because Elwing can see their spirits as clearly as she can see the Edain’s, perhaps it is because the Edhil can see her spirit as clearly as they can see the Edain’s, perhaps it is because all parties involved can mark the difference between the Edhil and Elwing. The Edhil believe themselves to be eternal. They are not. When they stand before Elwing, when they see her spirit and can compare it to their own, they cannot deny the truth of themselves: they are not eternal.)

But even with all of these factors, there is not enough food. There is never enough food. There never can be enough food, here, in a land that was never meant to support even half the number who currently slink through the tall reeds, praying they never draw the notice of their Enemy or his Orcs, or those Edhil who claim to be so superior, but in reality are nothing but Orcs in Edhil flesh, Orcs whose flesh has not yet begun to deteriorate into shapes more suitable to their nature. There is fishing to be had in the Sea, there are ships that can travel further south and try to negotiate for grain and for vegetables and fruit, there are things that can be found out in the marshes where the land is too unstable for their little mud-brick houses, and there is never enough food.

Elwing can never know all of her father’s struggles. She is young, she knows, and even if her thoughts do not quite follow the patterns of the few children here in the Lisgardh with her, she is too young to know for certain everything that her father must have struggled with, when he was burdened with a grown and a millstone-heavy set of obligations that should never have been his. She is a child. She has known hunger. Any memories of something that is not hunger is locked behind the misty walls in the back of her mind, behind which the years go too far back for her to retain any memory at all.

She has known hunger.

She loves it not.

-

When Elwing is ten, she is deemed old enough to go digging through the marshes looking for mussels and crabs and those strange frogs that can tolerate saltwater and the little fish that might have come too far inland during high tide and now find themselves stranded in the little pools in the depressions in the sand-soil that dwindle and dwindle the higher Anor rises towards the sky and the more the bright, hot sunlight bakes the water right out of those pools and bakes the fish in the graves they never sought. There are whispers, many whispers, about the appropriateness of allowing the blood of Elu Thingol and Melian the Queen to root around the marshes for food like any other poor urchin in Beleriand, especially considering that among the Gondolindrim, the Lady Idril will allow her son, a boy Elwing’s age, to do no such thing.

Elwing insisted upon it, and there, the situation becomes… sticky. Elwing insisted then, and she does insist now, that if she is queen, then she must do these things. There are those who mutter where they think Elwing cannot hear her that this is the whim of a child that must not be indulged, that this is the whim of a child who is using the power of her blood to try and force them to bend to her will. There are those who think that Elwing is the blood of Elu Thingol and Melian the Queen, that she is the blood of Lúthien Tinúviel and Dior the Beloved and Nimloth who was for a short while the heart of Menegroth, and that she must not be allowed to go out into places where she could be found by their enemies, that she must not be allowed to go out into places where she can be swept out into the Sea and lost.

(They do not know the Sea, if they think that Elwing will ever be lost there by any will but her own. They do not know the Sea, and they do not know her. But Elwing does know herself, and she knows the Sea. She has dwelled by it for as long as she can remember, and it has whispered to her in the long watches of the night, when the northern skies burn too brightly for sleep to ever find her. The Sea whispers to her, in a way she does not think it has whispered to others, for no one ever seems to take the same sort of solace, or as much solace as can ever be found in these shadowed days, from the words the Sea whispers to her.

Elwing will never be lost in water by any will but her own. This much, at least, will be left entirely in her own control. No one will drown her but her own self. No one else even knows how.)

No one is ever able to find the words that can unlock the box they think is in her mind, the box within which is locked understanding of the wisdom of their own words and logic. No one is ever able to grasp that there is no such box, that Elwing has not misunderstood them and this is not a matter of educating a silly child on the silliness of her own desires. There is nothing silly about what Elwing wishes to do. There is nothing silly about going out into a marsh to look for food, when there is not enough to go around.

Eventually, they stand aside, and Elwing is allowed to go out into the marsh, much the same as nearly everyone else in this little camp in the Lisgardh, such a small remnant of their people and yet far, _far_ too large for the land to carry them without straining and groaning, and search for food.

Not alone, of course. Elwing is never allowed to be alone with her thoughts, no matter how much she might wish for it.

Not alone. Elwing is not allowed such things. She is queen who should never have even been heir. She is queen and child both, and her people will not countenance her being alone.

Thranduil is her appointed minder, most of the times, and truth be told, that is a state of affairs that suits Elwing just fine. Elwing has learned to listen hard to the words and the thoughts of others when she does not speak, and for all that her voice is hearkened to, she has much occasion to listen. Thranduil separated from his parents to remain here in the Lisgardh; why it was that Duileth (Elmo’s child, so a cousin of some denomination) and Oropher (no relation whatsoever, no one who shares blood with Elwing, no one Elwing is particularly interested in, in any sense of the word) have chosen instead to sail on to the Isle of Balar with the greater part of the survivors from Menegroth, that is a question that is buried too deep down in the minds of those who speak or think on such things in Elwing’s presence for her to divine the answers without someone else beginning to suspect at what she’s about. It’s a question buried too deep down, and in Thranduil’s mind, buried so deep that sometimes Elwing wonders if it is even there to divine at all. It is there, she is certain of that, but he is always very careful not to think of it when he is anywhere around her, and she never has any opportunity to try to draw it from the back of his mind.

Thranduil keeps his secrets well, and part of that seems to be that he rarely speaks of anything in particular with Elwing when she goes off into the marsh and he accompanies her, as a minder rather than a helper (Elwing did not ask for help, Elwing is not always certain whether or not she _wants_ the help, but sometimes she wishes for the companionship and for something else that she does not, has never known well enough to name, and whatever it is she’s wishing for, it’s not something she is ever able to get with the arrangement set out the way that it is), which does at least leave Elwing some leeway to think, even if her thinking is best done in the few precious moments of solitude she is able to steal from those who feel that her time would be better spent elsewhere. Thranduil, Elwing thinks, would rather not be here, out in the marshes as his ten-year-old queen works to pry mussels from the shifting, squelching sand and grapples with slippery frogs and fish and beats crabs into submission with a bit of driftwood fashioned into a rod. Thranduil would rather not be out in the marshes when he could be in the settlement.

Thranduil would rather not be in the settlement if it was at all possible for him to return to Menegroth. Elwing has discerned that much from the angry, aching buzzing of his surface thoughts. Thranduil would rather not be here. Thranduil would rather be back in Menegroth, even if he had to go back to it alone, even if he had to go back alone and live among the ruins alone, but others have extracted promises from him to do no such thing, and thus he remains here, resentful always of the meager shelter from prying eyes of the reeds, resentful of Anor beating down on them, resentful of every evil done to them that has put them in this place.

Thranduil can bury a secret well enough, but he does not do a very good job burying his surface thoughts.

They feel… They feel right. They feel as if they could have come from Elwing’s own mind. Sometimes, Elwing is not certain that they did _not_ come from Elwing’s own mind, and simply drift into Thranduil’s for her to find.

…She would not go to Menegroth alone, to be fair. She would not go to Menegroth alone. Menegroth is no place for her when it has had its heart ripped out. Menegroth is no place for her without her family in it. Elwing does not wish to face the multitude of ghosts that must now dwell within what was once Doriath’s beating heart, does not want to stare into their misty, sightless faces and account for her own continued survival in light of their own untimely, undeserved deaths. Menegroth is… It’s wrong for her to live there, when she would be living there without her father, her mother, her brothers. It’s not a place for her, when none of the people who should have been living there with her are any longer present anywhere on this side of the Sundering Sea. If the desire to become a houseless spirit, to become a ghost, ever grows within her so overwhelming that she can no longer contain it, perhaps then Elwing will go seeking out Menegroth, but before then, here she remains. Her courage is unequal to the task. She is the one who must always stay.

And there is another reason to avoid Menegroth, to be _absolutely_ fair. Elwing has been fed stories of the place where she was born the way other, more fortunate children would be fed bread and meat and fruit and vegetables. Elwing is young, but she has lived in the Lisgardh for as long as she can remember. She has seen the havoc time and grief and erosion and the merciless wind can wreak upon their poor little mud clay houses. Menegroth is something that was meant to be eternal. That much, the stories have more than adequately conveyed. But their enemies came down upon them and made wreckage out of what should have been eternal, and to see the eternal cracked open, possibly still bleeding sluggishly onto the earth, would put a wound too deep into the earth for Elwing to ignore. It would resonate in her bones, banish all thought from her head, so that all Elwing would be able to do would be to resonate the wound in the earth the way the broken stones must. There are times when she likes to sit in the sand among the reeds and resonate the Sea. But she does not care to do this forever, and she thinks the power of the violence done upon Menegroth might be enough to hold her in place that her people would deem her lost, the way they once deemed Thingol lost.

Elwing will stay away from Menegroth. It is not a place for her. It is a place far more powerful than her.

Today, there are no clouds to give any sort of marker of distance in the pale blue sky overhead. The reeds stand too tall and too thick here for Elwing to make out the Sea and make out that other marker, the far horizon where pale blue slowly melds into the grayish-blue of thousands of fathoms of seawater, though the sound is up, so high and roaring in Elwing’s ears that she can barely even make out the cries of the seagulls overhead. Elwing eyes those gulls suspiciously as she goes to inspect a watery hole in the soil, watching to see if any of the greedy beasts have noticed her and her bucket, have guessed at what she’s doing out here. She’s had to fight off the gulls, before; it’s one of the few instances in which Thranduil can be roused to do anything other than stand watch in pensive, discontented silence, but he doesn’t have Elwing’s instincts for fighting gulls over their supper that he does, and he’s been bitten (pecked? Yes, pecked sounds better) by the gulls more than once, usually when bodily grabbing one and tossing it away from the bucket.

 _These_ gulls, at least, seem blessedly oblivious as to what’s going on down below them. At least Elwing will not have competition to compound her troubles, not for right now. (Perhaps later. There is always a ‘later,’ and there are always seagulls, even when the cold winds blow down with especial harshness from the evil north. Elwing wonders, sometimes, how many more decades she will spend doing battle with seagulls over crabs, before the evil north finally spews the fire that murders them all. It must happen eventually. Sometimes, she hopes it does not happen before the Rodyn at last answer their prayers. Sometimes, Elwing is filled with the cold, leaden certainty that those prayers will go forever unanswered, that the Exiles have damned them all to eternal disfavor and apathy in the eyes of the Rodyn, and in those cases, she hopes that death will be what finds her first, rather than captivity. Elwing has dreamed of captivity, sometimes. She has dreamed of being taken before the Enemy the way her grandmother was taken before the Enemy. She does not have power equal to that of Lúthien’s. She cannot imagine anything other than being made as if the lowest and more wretched of thralls before this great scourge of Ennor. She does not dance, and she does not sing. Her enchantments, such as they are, dive deep down inside of her, and they are not something that can ever radiate out.) That leaves Elwing to her foraging, and her battles with the crabs.

She peers briefly down into her bucket to observe the contents, biting back a long sigh. Queens are not supposed to sigh, especially not in the manner that Elwing wished to, just now. It does not matter how old the queen is, if she is thousands of years old, or centuries, or decades, or if she is just ten. If a girl of ten is a queen, especially if that girl of ten has a mind and thoughts within that mind that is rather unlike that of the few other children who live also in this camp in the Lisgardh, that girl does not sigh. It is unfitting for one of her position. It’s unfitting for one who must, even in such privation, be an example to her people.

(What exactly is she supposed to be an example _of_ , Elwing wonders? Is she supposed to be an example of the way a child breaks when that child is raised without her family? Is she supposed to be an example of the truth of the supposition by writers and philosophers that a child who is not nurtured by both of her parents when she is growing up is incomplete, both physically and mentally, for all who know Elwing agree that she is a strange girl, nothing like sunny Eärendil who yet has both his parents to give him affection and the benefit of their wisdom, and on top of that, most agree that she seems unlikely to achieve the physical stature enjoyed by her father and her grandmother and her great-grandparents? Is she supposed to be an example of what becomes of those who take on responsibilities beyond their own capacities? Or is she just supposed to be an example of what eventually becomes of all who must live in these dark days? Though the speed at which they fall into such a state tends to vary upon the strength of their hearts, that could certainly be it; Elwing does not think her heart particularly resilient, though it yet supports her body.)

It would be unfitting for Elwing to sigh, but Thranduil apparently feels no such compunctions against sighing. Elwing does not think she has ever known Thranduil to feel any hesitation when it comes to expressing…

He sighs again, sitting himself down in the shade of an especially dense clump of reeds, scrubbing at his forehead as if trying to ward off a headache. Elwing pokes around the hole a little more, retrieving a single something that she hoped would be a mussel, but turns out only to be a rock, before giving up on it. If she wants to find anything else edible today, she will have to go further afield. But just here, she has found something else to hold her interest.

Elwing… It is hard to know Thranduil well, when he resists attempts to get to know him better. Perhaps when she is grown, perhaps when the course of her thoughts shifts to something that more closely resembles the thoughts of those around her (if they ever do, and Elwing is not certain that she wishes them to, if it means that she will lose what connection to the earth she has that seems to be so much stronger than that of those around her, if it means that she loses her insight into the minds of those around her that seems also to be so much stronger than that of nearly everyone around her, considering that no one ever seems to expect her insights—Elwing must already grope about in the ruins of a harsh and desecrated world, and would rather not do it half-blinded), he will be more comfortable with the idea of knowing and being known by Elwing. Perhaps when she is grown, Elwing, who can have no friends among the Iathrim, for those responsible for her care have impressed upon her over and over that a queen has subjects, that among her subjects there may even be those whom she regards as friends, but that a queen can never _truly_ call her subjects friends, for ultimately they owe their allegiance to her, and who among those you can give orders to can you _really_ call your friends, will at least be able to regard Thranduil as someone she can _speak_ to, someone she can seek counsel from and trust the wisdom of that counsel.

(Sometimes, Elwing wonders whether her father or her great-grandfather struggled with the idea of the friendless king. She wonders if their loneliness was assuaged by the presence of their wives, if Melian and Nimloth could be their friends—a king’s people are his subjects, but surely that must not quite apply to his _queen_ , especially in Thingol’s situation, since the Ainur must be held higher than the Edhil, even the highest of the Edhil. Or perhaps no one told them these things. Thingol and Dior were both men grown when they assumed the throne of Doriath, and if someone ever attempted to tell them that their rarefied position in society meant that they could never have any true friends, if their personal inclinations ever took them in another direction, they would most likely have simply disregarded the advice of those who tried to tell them they could never truly have any friends among their own people, they would most likely have just ignored those people, and carried on to their own satisfaction. They ruled the Iathrim out of Menegroth. They were not born into ruin. They had the confidence required to go their own way.)

Perhaps, one day. For now, Thranduil is, though he has accompanied Elwing out into the Lisgardh many time, in many different modes of weather, most of them rather less pleasant than these weather conditions (though the heat is starting to have an effect on Elwing’s hair, the sort of effect that will no doubt make at least one of her minders stare at her upon her return to the camp and wonder to themselves, even if they never say it aloud, when it was that Elwing allowed a family of rats to start nesting in her curly dark hair), little more than a stranger to her. He has kept his own counsel and his own company, for all the time that Elwing has known him, for all the time that she can remember. The only person whose company he seems to enjoy rather than tolerate is that of skittish, reclusive Nellas, who spends more time out in the reeds on her own, sleeping in the wet sand under the stars, than she does in the camp, where Elwing does not think she has ever seen her truly at ease.

It does make Elwing curious, honestly. Thranduil forsook his parents company to remain in the Lisgardh rather than moving on to the Isle of Balar, and he does not even seem to be all that happy to be here. He agreed to follow her out into the reeds whenever obligations require her to go looking for food with which to feed herself and those others in the Lisgardh, and spends all of that time studiously avoiding even speaking to her, except to tell her when they must return to the camp, either because of the late hour, the rising tide, or because (and this happens only rarely, but it still does happen, and there is a _reason_ that Thranduil is always armed when they go out into the reeds, both barefoot and Elwing’s skirt pinned up around her knees) they realize suddenly that they are not alone, and Thranduil would much sooner they return to the camp than linger long enough to get some idea of what the other person or other thing out in the reeds with them is.

(If an animal, they would come to no harm. Elwing has done battle with seagulls over crabs before, and she has occasionally had to whack crabs into submission with her rod to get them into her bucket, but no other animal has ever offered her any harm, and even the seagulls balked at the idea of harming her directly—the crabs respond to her only as prey must respond to a predator with delicate, vulnerable fingers, and Elwing is no longer foolish enough to offer her fingers to them directly.

Celeborn visits on rare occasions, and he was once, in Elwing’s hearing, relayed a story from Elwing’s earlier childhood, when she was around five or so years old. It was winter, and wolves had made their way into the Lisgardh, desperate for food. Elwing got away from her minders and wandered out into the reeds, and when her minders finally found her again, they found a single, scrawny wolf lying on its side, allowing her to sleep with her head pressed up against its flank. The only danger involved lied in trying to draw Elwing away from the beast, for this the wolf met with protest, and until Elwing got up and toddled over to her minders under her own power, this protest involved low growls and the snapping of sharp-toothed jaws.

Celeborn had not really believed that story, not at first. But the minders kept repeating it, and Elwing, whose memory of the event is admittedly hazy (her minders had rarely let her out of their sight since then), repeated it once to him as well, and he was persuaded to believe it. Clearly not _happy_ to believe it, but he did believe it.)

Elwing looks at Thranduil through the curtain of her thick, dark hair, wondering if now would be a good time to ask questions. Which one should she start with? She has so many, and has no idea which ones he would balk at, which ones would drive him into a sullen silence from which he would not emerge until long after they returned to the Lisgardh. Elwing would rather not contend with such a silence, not now. She’s more than capable of such a silence, herself, and does not want to consider the _weeks_ it might take before Thranduil relaxed enough for her to try her questions again, if it came to that. And trying to pry the answers from his mind without his words being involved, Elwing has done that before, to others, and a sullen silence would likely be the least of her problems, in such a case. That is not something she wishes to contend with, either.

But Thranduil does something that, at this moment, Elwing was not expecting.

Elwing looks at Thranduil, and in turn, Thranduil does not look at her, exactly, but fixes the stare of his pale gray eyes upon her bucket, his mouth quirking downwards like he wants to grimace, but is forcing himself not to. “I… I do not… I have not been paying much attention to your progress, ‘tis true. Has it been good hunting?”

When you are ten, and your thoughts run in courses that others do not seem to regard as being typical, it’s easy to interpret things as insults. Even when you are a ten-year-old whom those around you consider a ‘normal’ child, it’s easy to interpret things as insults. But it’s easier when you are a ten-year-old of the same sort as Elwing, and when you have been taught to be wary of and sensitive to insults—an insult to Elwing is an insult to the Iathrim as a whole, or so she has been assured; it is important that she not let a single one pass her by.

So Elwing weighs those words over in her head, over and over again until the weight of them is as familiar as the weight of the rod she does battle with crabs with, out here in the reedy marsh. She weighs the words, and Thranduil does not press on in spite of her silence, which gives her enough time to decide that most likely, the question was not meant as an insult.

So now she has to reply to it.

That doesn’t sound much more pleasant.

She must try, anyways. She’s often been admonished to be more sociable, though no one seems to know how exactly Elwing can become _more_ sociable, not without going against her very nature.

“…No,” she finally settles on, which is totally inadequate, and yet also all that she can force out of her mouth. It will have to do.

He does not reply to her immediately, instead picking up a small rock in his hand long enough to turn it over in his palm, then lob it further out into the reeds, making a dull thump against the wet sand that makes Elwing wince, for reasons unclear, even to herself. Elwing waits for that response, and when it finally comes to her, it comes in the form of a bitter, muttered, “There is a familiar refrain.”

Yes, it is.

There is a strange combination of sheltering and exposing her to things that no other ten-year-old is ever exposed to, in the way that Elwing’s caretakers introduce her to this world and maintain her access to it. ( _In how they raise you, in how they care for you_ , but Elwing cannot quite go as far as that, no matter how many would think the wording strange. She does not know why, but she just cannot go that far.) Elwing has never been allowed to go to the parts of the camp where the Exiles dwell unaccompanied, never been allowed to go to that part of the camp without guards who go about armed and glowering at every Exile they make eye-contact with as if they expect that Exile to suddenly turn murderous and spring upon the young queen of the Iathrim—and perhaps they might; there is very little you can truly put past the Exiles, even those who had no part in the Kinslayings, and most among the Iathrim would rather deal with the Mithrim Sindar among the refugees from Gondolin, though the Mithrim Sindar would rather not deal with the Iathrim. Lady Idril’s access to Elwing is sharply curtailed, though truth be told, Elwing does not particularly mind Lady Idril, and when he’s not crying or actively dwelling upon his lost home, she does not mind Eärendil, either.

But she must be involved with the governance of her people, even if she is queen over a refugee camp rather than a kingdom, even if her age precludes her from many of the judgments that an adult ruler would never be expected to shirk, even if much of her involvement at this age still involves simply observing the adults at their work. Elwing must be involved with the governance of her people on some level, even if it is only to listen, and to observe.

In that capacity, Elwing has had many opportunities to learn about the struggles the adults who have really been in charge of the camp in the Lisgardh have had in obtaining enough food for them to merely go hungry most of the times, rather than end up starving most of the times. It’s a struggle that the Iathrim and the Exiles share, and one of the few areas in which they are of one mind and one heart and one purpose, and the Iathrim are not constantly wary of the Exiles’ purposes and potential actions. It’s a struggle that they would all be utter fools not to share with as much concord as they can manage.

All their safety lies in secrecy. They do not have warriors or arms or defenses enough to defend themselves against any attacking force, be they Orcs or Kinslayers or evil Men. All they have standing between them and the utter abyss is the reeds that hide their little mud clay houses and somehow, _somehow_ , manage to disguise the smoke from their fires enough to keep from drawing their enemies right to them. (Somehow. Sometimes, Elwing hears whispers, whispers muttering that perhaps their enemies are just biding their time and lulling them into a false sense of security, as the Enemy lulled the Exiles into a false sense of security before raining fire down upon them. She hopes… She doesn’t know what to hope.)

All their safety lies in secrecy, and thus, securing food from the outside is not so simple as all that. They must find a way to negotiate for food and have it brought in without attracting notice, must find a way to _compensate_ those who bring them their food—the food brought to them from Balar is given them to completely free of charge, but when obtained from other sources, compensation of some sort is required, and trying to secure whatever it is their sellers request has been a trial in and of itself. And even when they send their own ships, as few and as meager as they are, out into the Sea for fish, there is never any guarantee that they will find them, in large enough numbers to preserve and distribute to keep the people from going hungry for a few weeks, never any guarantee that they will find any fish at all. The fishing is rich around Balar, but it’s a fair distance from the shoreline to the island, and the fishing is not so rich right around the shore.

All their safety lies in secrecy, but there can be no prosperity in such utter secrecy. They cannot prosper when they must hide their presence from nearly everyone in the world. They cannot live if they allow the world to know where they are. Two margins, two sources of tension, and Elwing can feel each of them working on her, pulling her in different directions, and she would say that she does not know when they will cease, but she knows exactly when they will cease, they will cease when they have pulled her apart, when they have rent her body in two and her people are left to gather up the pieces before they have any sort of burial.

It hurts. It hurts in the ever-present dull ache in the pit of her stomach. It hurts in the headache often fulminating at the back of her skull. It hurts in the leaden weight tugging at the base of her heart. Elwing does not know what to do with it. Whenever she even tries to look at it, it just spirals out and out until it’s so big that she cannot even comprehend it in its whole, and she must turn away from it to seek the comfort of the earth and the Sea.

Thranduil tuts in the back of his throat, though it does not seem directed at Elwing, not exactly. “I thought not.” He fiddles with a tarnished ring on his hand, spinning it on his finger until the skin beneath is visibly reddening. “I cannot remember a time when the tables in Menegroth were not laden high, even in the lean years. Now see what we have been reduced to.”

Elwing has been told many stories of Menegroth. There are some among her minders who do not seem to know any _other_ kind of story, and thus, Elwing has listened to many tales told of Menegroth, listened to them regale her with tales of its incredible beauty and prosperity and power over and over and over again. She never knows how to feel when they start on a new one. As long as she’s listening to it, it’s wonderful. She can imagine the place of her birth as it was in his glory, can lose herself in the descriptions provided to her by her minders, and think of nothing else for as long as it lasts. But it cannot last forever, and when their tales are done, coming back down to earth feels like nothing quite so much as it feels like being pinned to the ground like a fallen pile of bricks.

She always forgets that last bit whenever she is given the prospect of a new tale. She always forgets, until she must come back down to earth once more.

For now, Elwing feels a little as if she might sprout wings and come to know Aran Einior’s realm better than what her meager knowledge can currently provide. She chases that feeling, sometimes. Sometimes, she feels like she could spend her whole life chasing that feeling.

“Were they?” A thousand questions are clustering in Elwing’s throat, and thus, it’s only the shortest, the vaguest, the most paltry, that can make its way through onto her lips. Perhaps she will be able to pry out one of the better ones, soon. She would like that.

Thranduil’s eyes glaze over in reminiscence, and as Elwing is transported by those tales of Menegroth, Thranduil gives off an impression of being transported as well, and he seems not even to need another’s words to take him to some place that is not their measly shelter within the Lisgardh. “No one has ever told you of the feasts of Menegroth in those years of peace, have they?” He smiles bitterly. “It’s a shame that you could not sit at them yourself. The king sat you on his lap for the feast that celebrated the passing of your first year and fed you himself. In a better world, you should have memories of plenty of them, yourself; it has been two years since you have been old enough to sit at them past early in the evening.”

Something inside of Elwing shrivels a little at the mention of her father, though she tries not to let it daunt her badly enough to reduce her voice to silence, as her voice is so often reduced. “What… What were they like?”

His eyes still glazed over, clearly seeing not the reeds but a phantom of a vanished past, Thranduil sighs heavily. “What were they like? I curse these evil days, that you must even ask. I will tell you…”

And tell her, he does. Once he starts, he seems unable to stop, and Elwing is unable to do anything but sit herself down on the sand and listen, uncaring of the water slowly seeping through the thin cloth of her dress to soak her skin. Actually, it’s not that she’s uncaring, so much as she doesn’t notice. Neither does she notice her hunger, neither does she remember the bucket, or her rod, or the sunlight beating down on her skin, beginning slowly to burn, or the wind whipping her hair back and forth, or the heavy ache tugging on the base of her heart.

Voice dripping with something that does not sound like appetite so much as it sounds like _longing_ , Thranduil begins to weave tales for Elwing of the feasts enjoyed at Menegroth’s high tables. Visions of massive perch and carp gleaming in the candlelight, glistening with vinegar and crusted with rosemary and parsley and thyme, tantalize her mind’s eye, though they are nothing compared to what comes next. Sweet, crisp wines in such quantities that the whole of the city could drink their fill and then contend with the hangover the next day, without the stores ever running dry, were a staple of midsummer feasts, while spiced mead in similar quantities were a staple of midwinter feasts and left the drinker feeling as warm and effervescent as if they were composed of that mead entirely.

Beds of greens would so heavily laden down the tables that those tables would look more like flowerbeds in a garden than they did the feasting tables of Menegroth. Children delighted in towers of candied plums and cherries, while hunters showed off the stags and boars they had taken down with their arrows and their spears after the cooks had finished with them. The last of the spring or summer vegetables would be made into thick, hearty stews full of pork and parsnips and potatoes and beans. In the winter, thick, succulent meat pies were handed out to the people of Menegroth from the royal kitchens, to warm their stomachs and their hearts against the snowstorms that raged outside.

No one ever went hungry in Menegroth, Thranduil emphasized over and over and over again, longing tainted with bitterness as his gaze drifted out towards the east.

Much of what he told her was rather beyond Elwing’s ability to fully comprehend. He spoke oftentimes of things she had never eaten, spices she had never scented or tasted, a feeling of sublime fullness that she had never in her life experienced. It was a little as if Thranduil occasionally slipped into another language while he spoke to her, something she had never heard before and had no ability to parse or understand.

But his mind was more open now than it had ever been when he kept her company, and his impressions were practically diving into her mind, without Elwing needing to skim deeper than the highest layer of surface thoughts. His mind is more open, and Thranduil considerably less fussed about the potential intrusion, and Elwing dives down inside at the invitation of phantom smells, and his tales take on another layer, at that.

Elwing has never eaten the vast majority of what Thranduil describes to her. The closest she has gotten is the fish they catch from the Sea, and none of it sounds like fish of the same sort as what was pulled from the rivers in Doriath. But Thranduil ate of the feasting tables of Menegroth more times than he can remember, and even if memory is now all he has left of those feasting tables, his memories are yet strong, and cling to his mind and his heart like limpets for her to pluck up and use to her own benefit.

When Thranduil talks, when he eagerly allows his mind to be transported to the past, Elwing goes with him, to an extent. She will never know how any of the foods he speaks of taste on the tongue, not exactly. But the smell comes to her, secondhand, but strong. The emotions the sight and the smell and the taste of those foods inspired in Thranduil when he ate them wash over Elwing like a tidal wave, so heady and so powerful that for as long as it lasts, she forgets where she is, forgets what she’s been doing, forgets the constant gnawing ache in the pit of her stomach.

For as long as it lasts, she is a princess in Menegroth, rather than a queen in the Lisgardh. She is sitting at the highest of the tables with her family, and if she can conjure none of their faces, if she can properly hear none of their voices, that matters less to her than it should, for she is rooted to the vision by the sights and smells of the dishes laid out on the table before her, and they, the proof of the generosity and prosperity of Doriath, they hold her attention more than the shades sitting off to her left and right can hope to, though part of the fizzy, buoyant joy bubbling up in her heart comes from knowing that she eats alongside them.

For as long as it lasts.

It can’t last forever, you know. The Edhil may be eternal, but even for them, and especially for Elwing, nothing can last forever.

Thranduil’s voice peters off into silence, and Elwing is sitting in the reeds again, her skin chilled by the water that has seeped through the thin skirt of her dress. Her skin is prickling with the over-tender sensation telltale of sunburn. The bucket rattles a little when the wind blows, and her stomach is aching. Her brothers are dead. Her parents are dead.

Elwing has work to do.

She is not a princess in Doriath.

She has much to do.

She is a queen in the Lisgardh, and she will never know that sublime feeling that must have been as living in absolute bliss for the Edhil when they knew prosperity, will never know what it is like not to be hungry. Perhaps there will come a day when the wars are done and all the evil actors in Beleriand are removed from it, but the path to such a day is hidden from Elwing’s sight, and she knows not how to find it. What she experienced now, before she was brought crashing back down to earth (what a harsh landing, what a harsh let-down), she will never truly know for herself. Hunger will always be her closest companion, dwelling beneath her skin where nothing else can ever hope to rival it. Her meals will always be paltry. They will always have to struggle for any food at all.

She’s had a taste of something else. Elwing surveys the contents of her bucket in dissatisfaction when they finally start to make their way back towards the camp. She’s had a taste of something else. Her body is weak, weaker by far than the spirit that dwells within, spirit limited by that body, body limited by the circumstances it must contend with. But she has had a taste of something else. She’d like to taste it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Aran Einior** —Manwë
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Nelyar** —‘Thirds’, the third clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen, who were named for Enel and Enelyë, the former of whom was the third Elf to awaken (Singular: Nelya) (Adjectival form: Nelyarin). The clan name they gave themselves was ‘Lindar’, meaning ‘Singers’ (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. During the Great March, they were dubbed the Teleri, ‘those at the end of the line, the hindmost’, for they were the last to leave Cuiviénen, and often lagged behind. This clan encompasses many different groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (Which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma; food insecurity]

Elwing is young. She is very young, especially by the standards of her own people. By the standards of her own people, the length of her lifespan is as the blink of the eye to the elders among the Iathrim.

Elwing is young, so very, very young, but where other children born to the Edhil at different times would have only been able to list a handful of notable occurrences in their short lives, Elwing is not so fortunate. Elwing has led a life with several _notable_ occurrences, and with those notable occurrences, there has come, if not wisdom, then at least knowledge. The sky is roiling overhead, a dense gray stew of clouds that verge closer and closer to black as the day wears on, until Anor is beginning to sink fast towards the horizon and the temperature is dropping lower and lower with it, one of winter’s many unwanted gifts, and in the changing of the wind, she can sense another, though nearly everyone around her discounts her words until there is no chance for them to do so any longer.

But eventually that sky opens, and it opens to pelt down upon the camp with hailstones the size of Elwing’s fist—not the largest hailstones she has ever seen, but hailstones large enough to give injury to anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside far enough from shelter to get more than the lightest pelting. Elwing is not surprised, does not know why anyone around her who heard her warnings is surprised, and yet, everyone around her is, yes, _surprised_.

Surprised and, in the case of those who have accompanied her out of her house today, more than a little annoyed, considering where they have ended up stranded.

Elwing minds it rather less than they do, though she does wish for her own bed, and not the pallet likely to be hers if the hailstorm continues past dark and her companions deem it too dangerous to try to make their way back to the part of the camp where Elwing’s house might be found. The floor is not much harder than her bed. Still, she wishes for it, for the familiar scent of her pillow and her patched blankets. She misses them at night when she cannot have them, especially on the occasions, numerous as they are, and more numerous in winter, when a night sky that ought to be fathomlessly dark is instead painted a livid, hair-raising smoky red in the north.

You do not get what you want. Not always. Not most of the time. You hardly ever get what you want. Sometimes, you never get what you want, and you simply have to live with it.

Perhaps the blankets here will be warm in the same way as the blankets Elwing comes back to nearly every night in her own bed. Perhaps. Given what sort of house this is, she can hope for that, at least, can she not?

“Your father is in good spirits,” Elwing murmurs to Eärendil as he joins her by the window.

Lady Idril and Tuor are entertaining, as much as they can, Elwing’s taciturn companions, the latter slowly managing to work a couple of them out of their reticence into something that, by morning, might actually pass for friendliness, though it will no doubt cool into reticent civility by the time the next visit comes around. Elwing has had a few years to form opinions of her own regarding the Gondolindrim, and though she does not think that she will ever love them the way a queen is obligated to love her own people—the Mithrim Sindar are the Iathrim’s cousins, but the Mithrim hold themselves aloof from the Iathrim out of anger regarding the age-old prejudice against those whose lands have been so close to those of Angband, and the Exiles among the Gondolindrim are too close kin to the butchers of the Iathrim for Elwing’s heart to every fully thaw against them as a whole—she thinks that she can at least regard them as allies. Who knows what the Kinslayers would make of the Gondolindrim dwelling alongside the Iathrim, but they are certainly equally vulnerable to the machinations of the Enemy and his henchmen, and if the Enemy resolves himself to destroy this meager camp hidden in the reeds of the Lisgardh, they will all die just the same.

Lady Idril and Tuor seem to recognize the Iathrim’s reticence (at the best of times) against them for what it is, and do not ever seem to begrudge it—or if they do, they never begrudge it obviously enough for Elwing to hear it drifting off of their surface thoughts. Elwing… appreciates that. She should not have to be in a situation where she is appreciating such a thing, but she does appreciate it. It makes things a little easier for her own people.

And then, there is Eärendil.

Eärendil smiles weakly at her, his gaze never straying from her face to that of his parents. “He has been these past few days, thank you.”

They will not speak of it. Lady Idril and Tuor have given the gift of recognizing the Iathrim’s reticence for what it is, and Elwing will give Eärendil this gift in return. (There are other gifts Elwing would like to give Eärendil, but things are rather early yet for such gestures, and Elwing still must contend with her own fears regarding whether or not such a course of action, and everywhere that course of action might lead, would only lead her to greater sorrow than what the world already provides her.) They will not speak of it any further, not when they have this corner of the house to themselves, not when they are huddled by the window in their cloaks and Eärendil has brought her a faded blue-and-green woven blanket that has been sitting out near the fire in an attempt to warm it up. There are other things they could be speaking of, many other things they could be speaking of, and following _that_ trail of conversation to its logical conclusion makes Elwing’s skin feel as if it’s sitting on the wrong grain, anyways.

Not that Elwing feels a particular urge to speak right away. The blanket is very warm, and Eärendil is… is not difficult to look at in silence. The hailstones pelting against the mud-brick roof sound almost musical, though it is not a composition that would ever win acclaim.

Not often that she gets anything resembling a moment’s peace, anymore. The years have gone down, and even if Elwing is considered incredibly, precariously young by the standards of her people, the blood of Men in her veins (however thin) has sped her towards maturity than a child with Edhil blood and no other would have enjoyed, and at fifteen, though an Edhel child with no other influences in the blood would likely never be allowed such responsibilities or obligations, Elwing’s own responsibilities or obligations have grown greater, of late. She has sat in judgment, she has made visits, she has coordinated housing repair and ship-building and listened to her councilors until her head is spinning and her body is aching and the omnipresent dull ache in the pit of her stomach has grown to a roar and she is convinced, more than ever, that though her blood might obligate her to this, she is unequal to the task, that her older brothers would have done better, that her father and her mother would _certainly_ have done better, and she worries all the time of what could go wrong because of her own poor judgment, because of any moment of inattention, because of any occasion in which her temper might fray at just the wrong moment. She’s started to dream about it nearly every night, replacing earlier dreams of faceless specters trying to play house with her that haunted her throughout all of her earliest childhood, and a moment’s peace is…

Yes, a moment’s peace is rare for Elwing, waking or sleeping. She does not savor them when she finds them, for that only makes it more difficult to put them aside when she must, but she does appreciate them, nonetheless. (There are other things she savors when she shouldn’t. It makes it easier for her to indulge in those things when she chooses not to in this case.) She appreciates them just as much now. Where before, everyone’s attention was on her, as it almost always is when she goes anywhere in the Lisgardh, now, Lady Idril and Tuor have drawn the lion’s share of that attention onto themselves, and Elwing is left with Eärendil, who sits across from her at the window, legs crisscrossed up beneath him, his clear, dazzlingly blue eyes fixed on her face.

A moment’s peace. Would that she could make it longer than just a moment.

(Increasingly, Elwing contends with whispers. By this, she does not mean the whispers of the Iathrim—though her people _do_ whisper, their whispers have never been of such import as this.

They…

They carried Elwing out of Menegroth that terrible night in winter, years ago. Elwing was counted among the most precious of what they were able to spirit away from Menegroth in the midst of its destruction, but not _the_ most precious. Those who nurse spite in their hearts in the face of destruction and murder are happy indeed at what else they were able to take away from Menegroth. Those who nursed spite in their hearts when they wrapped the Silmaril up in the densest, darkest cloak they could find, trying in vain to conceal its glory in full, did not quite grasp what it was they were taking away from the city, that night.

Elwing does, though. Elwing grasps it completely.

That her lines of thought and her perceptions are apparently abnormal compared to that of most Edhil has served her well here, for she alone has heard the whispery, sing-song voice of the Silmaril in the little chest in her bedroom at home. She has heard it, it has sung to her in the dark watches of the night when the skies are at their most brutal, their most ominous, their most threatening, has sung to her of the world that can be created if its power is harnessed properly, by one with sufficient might and subtlety, and has sung visions of that world for her in the meantime. Not always, and not with the same strength each time. When its song is done and it is quiet again, the dread inspired by the red flames billowing in the north is greater still than what Elwing felt before the song soothed her. But while it lasts, the succor given her is the best succor in the world.)

“How long will the storm last, do you think?” Eärendil asks her, as the last bit of light dies in the west and the only light left is the fire starting to burn low in the hearth in this little house belonging to the ruling family of the Gondolindrim. Tuor tosses a log on the fire, sending sparks popping out into the air around the adult speakers—one of them flinches, though no one stops speaking for long, providing enough cover for Elwing and Eärendil to have their own conversation in peace.

Elwing waves a hand through the air in languid irritation, before withdrawing it back behind the warm blanket with a grimace when her skin begins to prickle in the chilly air. “I’ve no idea. Why ask me?”

She expects some sort of prevarication, but Eärendil only shrugs and answers her frankly, “You were the only one who realized that the storm was coming in the first place. I’ve been on ships with sailors who have practiced their craft for hundreds of years, and none of them predict the weather the way you do. Those clouds weren’t even here a few hours ago, and you were warning against a hailstorm when the sky was still blue. Why not ask you?”

To that, Elwing can give no immediate reply. It’s strange, how her throat wants to close when he says things like that to her. They’re not so outstanding as all that—Elwing has not borne witness to too many romances, but she has listened to tales told and songs sung, and the tale of Lúthien and Beren is the favorite of nearly everyone in the Iathrim camp ( _nearly_ everyone), and the tales told of Beren’s reaction to seeing Lúthien for the first time will likely live on for centuries to come.

The tales of these conversations, held in the corner of the house while the adults are too wrapped up in each other to take heed of the two adolescents huddled by the window, will not be told for so long. Indeed, Elwing would be surprised if they were ever told at all. If the years the Iathrim and the Gondolindrim and those Edain who must exist here as well, if all the years they spend in the Lisgardh, is ever deemed a subject worthy of a few songs, Elwing doubts such conversations as these will ever be considered worthy of inclusion in them. They will have their anonymity in the songs, at least where this is concerned, and for that, Elwing is glad. The anonymity gives her more space to sort out the strange tightness in her throat before someone else notices it.

“I…” Elwing tries to smile, cannot quite manage it. “I suppose that makes sense.”

Eärendil _does_ smile at her, just a normal smile that nevertheless makes Elwing feel a little as if she’s standing in the Sea and the tide is trying to knock her down, which is _entirely_ unfair. His smiles fades somewhat, though, as his gaze drifts out the window, replaced by something too light to be bitterness, but too heavy to be mere wistfulness, either. It’s an expression that Elwing has seen on his fair face often, and she knows that he has seen the equivalent of it on her own face more often than he will have seen any other possible expression. It’s their lot, to wear such expressions. When such evil days must be theirs, when the homes that should have been theirs are nothing more than rubble and they must dwell within furtive little mud-brick houses in a sea of reeds, there can be nothing else for them. They can smile. Eärendil smiles more easily than Elwing, and neither of them smile easily as a rule. They can smile, but their smiles must be tainted by bitterness, must be tainted by nostalgia, must be tainted by wistfulness, must be tainted by hunger.

His smile fading into nothingness on his lips, like sea foam receding into the sand under hot sunlight, Eärendil tilts his head a little towards the window, though he never lets his brow rest against the rough, warped glass. “I remember hailstorms in Gondolin, if only vaguely. They came to us in summer rather than the winter times, but I remember a day when my mother bid me stay away from the windows; the ground in front of them was covered in broken glass, and all of the flowerpots outside where shattered.”

They do not have much in the way of flowerpots in the Lisgardh. There are some plants in rough clay pots, but those are not there for decoration. Some keep medicinal plants, harvesting them for use in poultices or potions or what have you, while others grow their plants in pots in what some would consider an entirely misguided effort to grow plants that they can keep for food. _Some_ consider it an entirely misguided effort, and their judgment would likely be based on the difficulties involved in obtaining fresh water during those times of year when the rainfall is somewhat less than during the wettest parts of the year during late spring and early summer. Elwing does not consider it an _entirely_ misguided effort, especially when those pots are attended to by those among the Edhil who possess especially strong gifts with the care and tending of plants, but she does still regard it as a misguided effort to some extent. Nothing can last in a place such as this. Nothing can last, not anything at all. (The Silmaril is eternal. The Silmaril can only be broken by a man who is dead and gone and whom all the tales say will never be allowed from the Houses of the Dead to wreak any more wickedness upon the world. The Silmaril is eternal, and can never be broken before Elwing’s eyes. That, she takes as a comfort. She should not trust comfort, but this sort of comfort she trusts unreservedly.)

Nothing can last in a place such as this, and thus, Elwing cannot ever see the efforts on the parts of her people to grow plants of their own in their rough, unpainted clay pots, many of them misshapen after having been formed by unskilled hands, as entirely well-conceived. But for as long as this place lasts, they must have food, and as long as they never have enough food to fill up the holes in the pit of their stomachs, they must try to find sources of food other than what comes from the outside.

Gondolin…

Eärendil has told her tales of Gondolin from time to time, though it has only been recently that they have found a balance that does not see tears streaming down Eärendil’s face or Elwing’s heart boiling with a rage that feels like it should come from outside, _feels_ like it should not be something that could ever be found scalding within her breast, but is just as native to her body as the ache in her stomach, is just as native to her mind as the shriveling of numb despair when she looks out of her window at night and she thinks the red flames billowing up on the northern horizon are inching a little further south.

Eärendil has told Elwing tales of Gondolin from time to time, and always there is a strange feeling of dwindling in her breast when she must confront the knowledge, over and over again, that she has no tales of Doriath to tell him in return. Oh, she has the tales told to her by _others_ , but that’s just it: all she has are tales told to her by others. She was so young when they fled the ruins of their lost kingdom that she has no tales of her own to tell to Eärendil. He comes to her with knowledge in his mind and poised on his lips, and all she can do is sit and listen. It’s enough to cast a long, dark pall over those tales even when they are not of a sort that foments searing rage in between her ribs and her heart. But tonight…

Tonight, Elwing sees another possibility, an opportunity that she thinks she might like to follow through to its conclusion.

“But you had sufficient shelter within,” she ventures, uncertain at first of how to connect to this to where she would like the conversation to go. “There was no danger of the house itself being destroyed, surely.”

He nods. “Always. There was a wealth of good stone to build the city with, and a wealth of good stone to build sturdy houses with.”

Unlike here, he means, and Elwing would not need to have the facility that she does with the thoughts of others to pick up on that. She has been here longer than he, and she remembers, however vaguely, the construction of the mud-brick houses in which they dwell. She remembers, however vaguely, and sometimes Elwing wonders if these are entirely her own memories, or if they are memories that she initially derived from the minds of others, and they have just clung to her mind for so long that she has since forgotten that they did not come from her mind immediately. But wherever these thoughts came from, they have been there for long enough that Elwing’s familiarity with them is as great as any familiarity she would have with thoughts that came unambiguously from her own mind. She remembers that they collapsed, she remembers that they sagged, she remembers that it took many different tries before they could finally perfect a recipe and perfect a building method and build up houses where the Iathrim could safely dwell. And even now, whenever there is a bad storm, you will hear of—or see, if you are like Elwing, and you are expected to go out and survey the damage personally—houses collapsing, either injuring or outright killing anyone unlucky enough to be inside of them at the time. Even when it is at the hands of the wind, that part of the world that is supposed to be under Aran Einior’s domain, something that is supposed to be a _friend_ to the Edhil, they have no true safety, no true guarantee of continued survival.

It’s not Menegroth, and it’s not Gondolin. The camp in the Lisgardh is not the masterwork of craftsmen determined to show off their skills, their talents, every last facet of themselves they can bring to bear. But if they can weave a vision of a place that _was_ , if they can put together what best about that place…

(They ate half an hour ago, a thin soup that tasted vaguely of onions and vaguely of garlic and perhaps a little of carrots but was mostly just hot water. It’s something that can fill up the stomach, but not for long, not for long, never enough to fully silence the little grumbling voice in the pit of the stomach.)

“I… I wonder…”

Elwing wonders, for a moment, if Eärendil might find her out, when she goes where it is that she wants to go. She’s pressed others for details before, though never one of the Exiles, always one of her own people. She does not know if tales have spread of her own tale-seeking, or if no one has noticed the pattern. She does not know if Eärendil has noticed a pattern. It’s not as if they spend every waking hour together, not as if they spend every day or week or even month together. And even if he has noticed a pattern, perhaps he just doesn’t make anything of it. Perhaps he’s noticed, and he just does not care.

She doesn’t really think he’s noticed a pattern. There are many things to admire about Eärendil, but his ability to notice patterns in other people’s behavior is not one of them. Elwing has observed this often enough to be certain of it, and it gives her some reassurance now: he will not know the pattern for what it is. And even if, by some chance, he does realize that there is a pattern to the questions Elwing has been asking him and others these past few years, she does not think he will judge her too harshly. (She hopes.)

“I wonder,” Elwing goes on, a little more confidently now that she has reassured herself that nothing may come of it except Eärendil’s ability or inability to answer her questions, “at what you might have eaten when you were trapped indoors. For is it not true—“ he is thinking of hailstorms, thinking of them right now, thinking of them so much that she only needs to make the lightest and most unobtrusive of forays into his thoughts to grasp at the second part of it “—that hailstorms in Gondolin could last for days on end?”

Only the lightest and most unobtrusive of forays, and thus, Eärendil never guesses at having been a party to it. His face twists in a full-face grimace similar to the ones Elwing has seen steal over his mother’s face when she is accused by some of those among Elwing’s people who have a less than stellar grip on timelines and how old someone being now would have made them during, say, the Kinslaying on the other side of the Sundering Sea, of having been involved in that Kinslaying. (This charge, at least, Elwing seeks to correct. She has heard that none of those among the Gondolindrim yet living had any part to play in that Kinslaying, something confirmed to her by Celeborn on his last visit to the mainland. She does not think she will ever truly love the Gondolindrim, but Thingol once accused those innocent of kinslaying of having been involved in such vile bloodshed, and that is not a family tradition that Elwing thinks she particularly wishes to carry on. There’s no joy in it.)

Another smile, this one dripping with choking wistfulness, slides over his mouth. “They could. But we never ran short of food in all that time, not even when the hailstones were as big as my fist, and to go out under them would have spelled death.”

At a later date, they will discuss just how _long_ those hailstorms in Gondolin could last. Hailstorms in the Lisgardh never last even half as long, and just how much further south the Lisgardh is than Gondolin does not seem enough to account for all of it. The conclusion they will eventually settle on is that, though the Enemy might not have known Gondolin’s location, he did at least have a clue as to where in the north the city was located, and he sent those hailstorms in order to make the lives of his hated adversaries just a touch more difficult. If so, more fool him, for the houses in Gondolin were strong enough to withstand the assault with little more than cosmetic damage sustained.

“We had more than enough food in the house to last us through the hailstorms,” Eärendil tells her, and without Elwing even needing to nudge him towards that conclusion, he begins to describe it to her.

Soon, Elwing’s eyes and nostrils are filled with phantoms of steaming hot, fluffy white bread with a golden crust, slathered in butter or honey or cream, depending on what is most plentiful and where Lady Idril’s fancy took her that day. The spiced wine was always watered down at least a little to avoid making Eärendil ill, but the color was just as lovely a garnet-red and the smell just as fruity and flowery as what was enjoyed by the adults of the household. In the mornings, Eärendil would be served oatmeal with whichever fruit was in season, apples or blackberries or mulberries or any one of a host of other options.

Talk of food during hailstorms shifts to talk of food during the winter (Probably for the best, considering that the hailstones begin to pelt just a little louder against the roof and the sides of the house when they speak of hailstorms past). During much of the hardest months of the winter, though Eärendil and his parents might have been of the House of the Wing, they spent at least part of nearly every day in the palace, with Eärendil’s kingly grandfather. Turgon, Elwing gets the impression, grew lonely in the wintertime, and liked to have his family nearby him. (Elwing can sympathize. If she had family left to have nearby…) During such times, Eärendil had much experience of his grandfather’s table.

The larders and granaries of Gondolin were inexhaustible, or so it seemed to a boy who spent but seven years of his life dwelling in that place. Eärendil never knew the tables in the palace not to be generously set, even when it was not a feast day—and when it _was_ a feast day, those tables would instead be groaning beneath the weight of all the food they were forced to carry.

There was little hunting to be had in the vale in which Gondolin sat, nor in the mountains surrounding it. The meat came from livestock whose numbers were managed with extreme care, and thus, what meat could be found on the feasting tables of Gondolin varied a great deal in quantity based on conditions, and varied a great deal in how it was prepared, based on those same conditions.

Beef and mutton and pork, for the most part, as chickens were bred for their eggs, and were slaughtered but rarely. But they _had_ that meat, they had it at all, they had as much food as they could eat, always, no matter the time of year, and Elwing does not think she would ever complain about having to cycle between just three meats, if it meant that she could have enough of it to fill her up.

Not that Eärendil is complaining much, himself. His eyes glaze over as he speaks about everything the clever cooks in the royal kitchens could do with the food brought to them. Thick, hearty stews with pork and beef and beans and all the vegetables just about to pass out of season, meat pies with gleaming golden crusts and fillings of mutton and potatoes and peas, roasts surrounded by fruits or vegetables or chestnuts. _Towers_ of chestnuts, roasted or candied, platters of sweet cheese tarts mixed with plums and nutmeg, salads thick with onions and parsley and mint, pots of piping hot tea flavored with apple slices or mellyrn blossoms or cinnamon or turmeric. Every time Eärendil came to the table, there was something new, something he had never seen before, and curious child, he just had to try it. He would not be satisfied until he had tried it, and the only thing worse than not being able to get to something in time to try it, was to eat it, only to discover that he did not like it.

“I miss it,” Eärendil admits, as his tales begin to wind down. His face is shadowed with a regret close to longing, so intense that Elwing half-expects to see tears well at the corners of his eyes. “I do. I…” He sucks in a sharp breath. “I know I should not miss it as much as I do, especially considering how much else we have lost, and cannot recover. But we’ve had so little since then, and I wonder sometimes if I will ever sit at a feasting table again, or at any sort of table that is not nearly empty. I wonder if I’ll ever sit among people who have been allowed to eat their fill, or if we’ll all just die starving here in the Lisgardh.”

Elwing grimaces harshly, her mouth twisting so severely that for a moment she feels as if her lips might simply detach from her face. She wonders the same thing, often, and increasingly, the answers fill her not just with dissatisfaction, but with anger. Why should it be their lot to sit here in the dark and within the meager shelter of the reeds, and starve, when their birthright was to rich kingdoms? Why is it that Elwing can never know the taste of the foods described to her, why is it that she can only have the mouthwatering sight and smell of those foods, why is it that she can only have the secondhand emotions of the people who ate these foods, and never know them herself? Why is it that she must contend with a hardship that none of them deserve, and live with that hardship, never knowing when the final blow will find her, never knowing how long she will have to live at all?

It is because the world is not kind, and they are beset on all sides by evil men and by things that are not men at all. This, she knows. The world is not kind, and the Rodyn care little for their struggles, for their wrath against the Exiles has poisoned them against the Sindar as well. Very little about this world is within Elwing’s control, or Eärendil’s. She is a queen in the Lisgardh, and she has no power over what goes on outside of it. She has no power over what might find its way here.

Elwing has no words of comfort to give Eärendil, though given the way his eyes have begun to shine, she thinks he might need them. She has no words of comfort, can dredge none up from the back of her mind. Hers is not a mouth constructed to give comfort. They would all be lies, and she cannot make her mouth fit around the lies. She reaches out a hand to brush against the back of Eärendil’s larger one, and just barely manages to keep herself from jumping when Eärendil responds by snatching up that hand in his own. She ducks her head, letting her hair fall over her face, so that she cannot see his expression, and he cannot see hers.

He would see hunger in her face. And in this moment, Elwing’s hunger shames her too much for her to let him see it.

-

Yes, _yes,_ why is it that they must live in such privation, why is it that they must never know the contentment of full bellies and sturdy houses and safe, quiet nights? Oh, _yes_ , Elwing knows the _answers_ to such questions, but those questions no longer satisfy. This is the world she has been left with, this is the world she has been forced to contend with, and there is no use in fighting it, for it is so much bigger and more powerful than any mostly-Edhel child could ever hope to be. There is no use in fighting it, she tells herself bitterly, over and over again as she looks at another broken house, at another broken body, at another mostly empty table. There is no use fighting it, she tells herself, as she marks another year without any of her family beside her to watch the year go down into the west with slowly sinking Anor.

No, there is no use in fighting it. Elwing is not the equal of Lúthien, or of her father, or of her mother. She has nothing with which to fight her fate. Even if she had that something, she has not the strength in her limbs to wield it effectively as a weapon. She cannot lead her people out of the Lisgardh, not to any road but that of destruction. Even within the Lisgardh, that may well be the only place she ever leads her own people. She is not the equal of her parents, not the equal of her grandparents, her great-grandparents. She is not their equal, any one of them would have done better in the shoes Elwing now finds herself occupying, and she cannot fight, cannot fight, it’s like beating your hands against the sand in an attempt to stave off the tide, and she just can’t…

There’s no use fighting it. No use at all.

But what about…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Aran Einior** —Manwë
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma]

The secret of the Silmaril is one Elwing never hopes to truly divine. She can take comfort in the fact that the only man who knows how to destroy it is dead and gone and can never return to these lands to try to claim this jewel for his own. Yes, she must take comfort in that, she thinks, as she opens the lid on the chest in her room, in the dark of the night.

Well, not a dark night, not really. It’s one of those nights you get in late winter, verging on spring, when the air is chill yet with a wintry bite, so cold that the clouds must flee further south towards warmer climes, for they do not carry snow and they know themselves not to be welcome here. Elwing has had much experience of such nights, though rightly, she ought not to. In the best possible world, she is still living in Menegroth, in an underground city, and there would be few reasons for her to emerge into the outside world at all, let alone at night. In the best possible world, she might venture out of the caves at night once or twice a year in the company of one or both of her parents, but her chambers would be far too deep within Menegroth for windows to the outside to be anything resembling a plausible possibility. She ought not have any experience of nights such as this—at least, nothing so intimate.

She does, though, and Elwing’s experience of truly peaceful nights has been… limited.

The wall of her room in this poor little house is painted a vivid, rippling scarlet as she rises from her bed. It’s…

She awoke in a panic, just a few minutes ago, heart thumping in her chest as if she had been running up and down the shoreline. The light was so bright, so incredibly, terribly bright that the meager warmth of her blankets for a moment seemed to her like the heat of a fire, and the light was so bright that for those first few moments of wakefulness, Elwing did not realize its true nature, thought for certain that those flames reflected on her wall were the flames of a fire raging in the camp, somehow ignoring the damp earth it would have needed to spread across. She ought to have known better. Ought to have known. Nearly every night, fires raged in the north. No one knew exactly what it was that the Enemy was burning, just what it was that he was _doing_ up there, and such a topic had often been a topic of discussion around the camp, though never too loudly, never spoken about when it could be whispered about, and Elwing had heard those whispers, she had heard them issue from mouths and issue from minds, heard them over and over again, and you would think she would have known better by now, but her mind still had one foot in sleep and it was rendered ponderous and plodding and clumsy, and when she awoke, her mind could not put two and two together as quickly as it ought to have, as quickly as it _would_ have, had she been fully awake.

At least she had managed not to scream. That was more than could be said for many of those who awoke to see their walls painted that eerie, livid red, and many of those, Elwing thought, had been _fully_ awake when they opened their eyes to see what should have been to all of them a sight familiar as the backs of their own hands (For those of them who still had both hands, anyways). She had managed to swallow down on any noise that might have escaped her mouth before it could bring guards running, and for that, she was grateful. At least she must not contend with an audience for her humiliation.

But a humiliation it is, and it is one that sees Elwing kicking her blankets off of herself and clambering out of bed, shaking the stiffness out of her sleep-numb limbs. She ought to know better, ought to be better than this, ought to be used to it by now, ought to be able to just roll over and go back to bed whenever she wakes to see her walls painted red. But she can’t. She never can. If she wakes to see that there are fires burning in the north, she never can find it in herself to become accustomed to it. She never can find it in herself to just go numb to it. It is her destruction, if it ever ventures far enough south. They will be like those trapped outside of Melian’s Girdle during the Dagor Bragollach, running for any shelter they can find, and finding none, when the fire finds them instead. She does not wish to burn, but it seems the most likely conclusion to her life. When the greatest and most terrible of their enemies is so fond of fire as a weapon and as a tool, burning seems inevitable.

Not now. She does not want to think about it right now. She wants one night, _one night_ , when she does not have to deal with this, one night of _peace_ where she neither has to see the flames painting her walls red, nor has to think about them and their source and their maker. She wants to withdraw from the world, wants to retreat into a place where she does not have to _think_ about these things, and where she does not have the constant gnawing in the pit of her stomach, worrying at her even now, to draw her back to the cold of this present world.

She wants…

She should not be grasping so desperately at the things that she wants. They are all beyond her. Everything she truly wants is beyond her, and she must try and forge a life without them. Must, must, must.

Her whole life is ruled by ‘must.’ This is what it means to be a ruler, except that Elwing can never truly be a ruler, for there is nothing she can do to protect her people as they deserve. She wields no weapons, can summon no magic she can bring to bear that she could ever hope to use as a weapon. If their enemies come to them, she has nothing but her words and her tears, and her words and her tears would mean less than nothing to them. But still, she must. She must do what she can. She must do what is asked of her. Must, must, must.

Must.

Must.

She goes to the chest, sitting on her knees with a threadbare blanket over her shoulders, in a pale imitation of the silken stoles the ladies of Doriath would wear at court.

Must.

Her hands scrabble on the latch.

Must.

The lid creaks open, and the room is flooded with another source of light, a light that seems to Elwing at times to be colorless, at others silvery, and at others to hold every last color imaginable to the Edhel eye, all of them shimmering out at once until the eerie red light pouring in from the north is banished completely from the room, and she can forget it source and its maker entirely.

The Silmaril is good at that. It always has been, and as Elwing lifts it out of its nest of cloth in her chest and holds it in her lap, it proves itself to be good at it again, for she feels the tension go out of her shoulders minutely, the tension go out of her back minutely, until she is sitting on what could be an ordinary room in an ordinary house in a place where she does not constantly live on the ragged edge of destruction. She could be anywhere. She could be anyone. She could be someone with a family. She would like that, would like that very much.

But there is not time for that, not right now. There are other things that must occupy her attention in this moment. She will have plenty of time, for when she puts the Silmaril back up, its gentle, nurturing light will vanish, and she will be left again with the flickering firelight that ought not reach this far down south—imagine how vast and terrible the fires must be, how endlessly hungry, to burn so tall and so bright that they can be seen staining the night sky at such a distance—to keep her awake for the rest of the night.

(She always expects the Silmaril to give off warmth to go along with its light. It never does. All that light, and not a single beam of warmth to show for it. Perhaps that is what’s best—to hear the Exiles tell their tales, the Silmarils contain the light of those dead trees whose final fruit and flower compose Ithil and Anor, who have brought so much light and heat to the world; if the Silmaril put off such heat, it would surely be as blisteringly hot as any coal, or perhaps burn even hotter.

Perhaps it is best that the Silmaril puts off no heat. Perhaps. But still, whenever Elwing holds the Silmaril in her hands, when it turns her flesh to incandescent silver where it touches the strange, adamantine substance of the casing, and she feels no warmth from what glows within, no warmth at all, she cannot quite shake off the strangest, most wrenching sense of loss.)

There is no one who can divine the secret of the Silmarils, let alone Elwing. Held in her hands is a riddle without an answer to anyone left alive—most likely, even Fëanor’s murderous sons do not understand the riddle, for their father was notoriously secretive and did not share his methods gladly. This, at least, Elwing can take some solace in, however incomplete and mutilated a solace it might be, for while she cannot guess at the secret of the Silmaril, at least she does not need to fear anyone who ever tries to steal it from her knowing that secret, either.

(‘Steal it from her.’ She has it because of theft, in the first place. Elwing tells herself often enough what anyone else would tell her: those Sons of Fëanor who yet haunt the earth lost any right to it when they did murder in their attempts to regain the Silmaril from the Iathrim. She can tell herself that all she likes, and she does so gladly, but she never can quite push aside that unease, not entirely.

Elwing has heard it said that thieves forever are paranoid of losing what they’ve stolen. She is not a thief. But she fears to lose this thing, all the same. Her heart seizes in her chest every time she returns to her home and finds that the chest has been moved. Even though she knows that, logically, it is due to someone having moved the chest while they were cleaning the room, she cannot be content, cannot quiet the panic and the rage in her breast until she has opened the chest and seen for herself that the Silmaril is still there, until she has learned that she can yet bathe in its light.

She is not a thief. She did not steal it. But she always fears to lose it.)

No one knows the secrets of the Silmaril. No one has ever been able to truly determine just what the casing is made of, only that diamonds must glance aside and be scratched when they are brought to bear against it. No one has been able to hazard a real guess at what the substance inside might be made of, aside from the fact that it glows with the light of dead trees, linking the past to the present (And oh, what might become of the world, if that link is ever broken). It is a riddle with no answer, a mystery with the solution withheld.

Lúthien could use it, though. Though it seems unlikely that she knew the secret of the Silmaril’s construction, Elwing has heard all the tales of Lúthien and the Silmaril—no one around her would have allowed her to go her life without hearing every last such tale over and over and over again, though Elwing has had sullen, traitorous moments when she has wished to have never heard any of them at all. Elwing has heard much of the paradise Lúthien made of Tol Galen when she wore the Silmaril about her neck, when the uncanny power of the half-Edhel child of one of the Ainur met and mingled with the equally uncanny power of this question mark in the fabric of the world. A fair land it had been even before the Silmaril was handed down to her upon her father’s murder, but she had wielded the Silmaril as no one before her had shown any ability to do so, and she had made an evergreen, ever-fertile, ever-temperate paradise out of a land that beforehand had merely been ‘fair.’ No snow ever fell upon Tol Galen, no leaves ever turned brown, no flowers ever wilted, not so long as Lúthien bore the Silmaril upon her breast. When she wore it, she seemed truly as one of the Ainur, rather than simply a half-Edhel child whose blood was wound with the Song that made up the world. She shone so brightly that you could see her from miles away. Her voice lifted up in song reverberated in the bones of every last person who dwelled in that part of Ossiriand, and chased them through their dreams. No one would have dared assail her. The Sons of Fëanor never dared tread anywhere within fifty miles of her home in Tol Galen. Even the Enemy sent no spies or scouts south to make an attempt to steal his stolen prize back.

Elwing’s fantasies are… You can imagine what her most-cherished, most often visited fantasies are. There can be no other logical answer to such a question. For one such as her, you must not seriously question whether or not you know the answer. There can be only one.

But she does have more than one cherished fantasy, you know. Even when living a life such as hers, Elwing can have a host of fantasies occupying space in her mind. Actually, you know, a life such as hers must only _facilitate_ fantasies. She has so little in the way of concrete to latch onto. Her mind must substitute it, instead.

Not all of those fantasies are positive. Not all of them are _nice_. Some of them constitute entirely all the different ways someone can die, if the world has decided that they must die. Sometimes, it’s someone else who is dying. Sometimes, it’s Elwing.

One in particular, though, it is very positive. It’s just a fantasy, of course. Elwing could never hope to by the equal of Lúthien, by any measure. But she has the Silmaril that was Lúthien’s, and sometimes…

Sometimes, she imagines herself wielding that Silmaril, the way Lúthien wielded it.

-

Easier said than done, of course. The secret of the Silmaril’s construction is one totally lost to this living world, and the secret of how to _wield_ the Silmaril is rather lost to the living world, as well. All the world knows what Lúthien did with it in Tol Galen. There are whispered tales as well of Dior’s work with the Silmaril in Doriath, though this does not seem to have merited quite the amount of comment as his mother’s, and Elwing does not know that that is a line of inquiry worth pursuing. She’s working against too much to consider the example of a king secure in his lands and his power.

Working against so much, working against so, _so_ much that she has no idea if she will ever be able to come to stand even within sight of her goal. It’s hardly as if Lúthien left behind a tutorial for those who might find themselves in the position to ask themselves if they, too, can potentially harness the power of the Silmaril. The Silmaril is a question mark upon the fabric of the world, and to Elwing, her grandmother is much the same. There is much about Lúthien that no one has ever been able to speak of as if they truly _understood_. She did not operate on the same logic as everyone else, did not need to, did not regard the world the same way everyone else had, did not need to.

Elwing… Elwing wishes she had her, sometimes. It’s not a wish as strong or as wrenching as the way she wishes for her parents and her brothers, but at times like this, when she sits alone in her room, the door locked against anyone who might try to enter without knocking, the Silmaril sitting in her hands, glowing like pale fire that gives off no heat, she does wish she had her grandmother with her, if only to give her guidance. Elwing is also someone who does not regard the world the same way as everyone else around her, but she does not have Lúthien’s strength, the sort of strength that would enable her not to _need_ to regard the world the same way. She holds the Silmaril in her hands, and oh, how it sings to her, how it sings so sweetly, so very sweetly, not consistently, not always, but no one around her has ever heard the singing, no one has ever hearkened to it, and sometimes Elwing wonders if she would be able to find some solace in her grandmother’s experiences of the Silmaril, sometimes she wonders if Lúthien would have been able to guide her, and sometimes she wonders if this strangeness is all her own, and Lúthien would be able to give her no answers or aid, but she tries not to think of such things now.

There is one thing Elwing knows for certain, and that by whatever method Lúthien might have utilized the power of the Silmaril to make Tol Galen such a fair place, it would have required as much strength as she could bring to bear. Even Melian was said to strain sometimes, to maintain the integrity of her Girdle, of all her enchantments that kept Doriath so safe, for as long as she remained within its bounds. Lúthien was not entirely of the Ainur, and thus her struggles must have been greater still, and yet, she gave no sign of those struggles, and yet she made Tol Galen so wondrously fair, so evergreen and undying, and never let any sign of the strain show on her face. She does not know if she shares that strength. She does not think she does. Lúthien never let hunger stop her, no matter how many times it must have assailed her in the wild, and here Elwing is, sitting in her room, and her hunger troubles her so much that she thinks she might list over and over and over until there is nowhere left to list, for she will be lying on her side on the floor.

Elwing shuts her eyes. Shuts her eyes and blinds herself to the light the Silmaril gives. Listens to the song.

It…

How difficult, to put it into words. The Silmaril does not sing with words, not exactly. What Elwing receives instead is a phenomenon not unlike that which she experiences when she goes skimming or diving into the minds of those around her, except that the periodic thoughts that can actually be strung into words are missing, and it’s all just pure sensation, snatches of sight and sound and smell, impressions so strong that when Elwing comes down from them, the world seems flat and distant by comparison.

How to draw them out, how to draw them out, how to string them out into this physical world and make their impression something that can be imposed over this physical world, rather than something that merely injects themselves into Elwing’s mind and paints themselves more vividly than her memories?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun   
> **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” ( _The Lost Road_ 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma, food insecurity, obsessive behavior, body image issues related to food insecurity]

No one ever left behind a tutorial on how to use the Silmaril properly. Thus, Elwing can only learn one way: trial and error, and hope that she does not fail too miserably in her attempts to make something more of this camp in the Lisgardh than a collection of miserable hovels in which they wait to die, rather than do anything that could truly be called ‘living.’

Trial and error, she reminds herself, and reminds herself again, to convince herself to keep going.

The first attempt, as you can imagine, did not go well.

Eärendil volunteered to sit with her to see how well it worked. Eärendil has been… He’s been more supportive of this than most everyone else who has cared to give an opinion on the matter, and has never balked at Elwing’s requests for a sounding board, for a second mind to give to the matter, and now, he does not balk when Elwing asks this of him, as well.

So they sit in a room of Elwing’s house which she has cleared out, and if those whom she has had to send away have drawn different conclusions from their sudden desire to be alone, well… Well, they are not so wrong as Elwing might have claimed a few months ago. She knows at least one has stayed within earshot of the house, and that, she will need to tolerate. She is a queen, if only a queen in the Lisgardh. Some degree of eavesdropping was always going to be something she must needs tolerate. Even if she does not love it.

“Is that…”

Eärendil’s eyes go wide when Elwing lets the cloth wrappings over the most valuable by far of her possessions, and it occurs to her, with a strange twinge of discomfort plucking on her heart and her lungs, that he has never seen the Silmaril, before. In fact, she is not entirely certain whether the Gondolindrim and the Edain in the camp even know for certain that the Iathrim were able to carry this off with them—oh, the fact that the Sons of Fëanor plainly do not have it would have given them a clue, but it’s always possible for something to be lost beyond recall without either side managing to lay a claim on it first, without either side managing to retain it.

She has perhaps gone too far. This is perhaps a bad idea. _Eärendil_ plainly had no idea that the Silmaril was here until Elwing unveiled it to him, and if Lady Idril’s son did not know, then there is a good chance that Lady Idril herself does not know, and that the Gondolindrim do not know, but they will now, Eärendil will certainly carry tales of the Silmaril to his mother, and she will carry tales of it to the rest of her people, and they will all know of it now, and Elwing will live in a camp surrounded by those who might wish to steal from her what was once stolen from another, and—

And she will never carry out this experiment if she fears theft so much. What binds her and Eärendil together will shrivel and die if she balks now. Elwing sucks in a deep breath. She must keep moving forwards.

“This,” she says very quietly, “is the Silmaril of Lúthien, passed down to me upon my father’s demise.” And perhaps that will be enough to stake a claim on her rightful ownership of it. She can hope that. She can certainly hope for that. What good hoping will do her is another matter entirely, but she can hope for that. “My grandmother once made use of its power to make her home the fairest place in Ennor. I… I do not know what I hope for.” Something that isn’t quite a smile, something that will never be strong enough to be a smile, frets upon her lips. “Something like that, I suppose.”

Eärendil’s wide eyes light up. The light of the Silmaril has gone into his eyes a little, making them appear as his mother’s too-bright Lechind eyes, but there is something different about them. The light in his eyes, as reflected from the Silmaril, is more approachable, more like starlight than the terrible light of two dead trees, more living, less static and dead. (Do the Lechind not realize how their eyes look like the light put off by the dead things in the night, do they not realize how much more closely their eyes resemble the bobbing lights you can sometimes see far off in the marsh than the light of fires lit within their hearths?) It’s a light that Elwing thinks she could spend a long time just looking at, just admiring and coming to know, a gentle, inviting light that for a moment she thinks about falling into, until she considers that if Eärendil’s crystalline blue eyes reflect this light, her own silvery gray eyes must reflect them as well, and if that light lingers there long enough, she can find it in one of her scratched, slightly warped mirrors just as well.

Eärendil’s hands twitch on his lap, as if he would like to lift them up, but thinks better of it. (Elwing is grateful for that. She watches those twitching hands, and her whole body tenses like metal wire pulled suddenly taut, her hands clamping down over the Silmaril, even as she knows that if it came to a contest of strength, she would lose, unless she was able to draw some strength from the earth that Eärendil could not match. She is grateful when he finally makes them still.) “I’ve… I’ve heard some things about Tol Galen,” Eärendil remarks, as if it is not one of the most often repeated stories in the Lisgardh. But then, the Gondolindrim must have their own tales, and Elwing has heard none of them in full, only small snatches, so perhaps it’s possible for Eärendil to be about as familiar with the tale of Lúthien and Tol Galen as she is with the tales of the Gondolindrim. (If they go down this path together as far as they could, they ought to learn more of each other’s people.) “If we could make the Lisgardh into a place like that…”

Elwing tosses off a diffident shrug, trying to hide just how much her heart quails at the prospect of being judged by such a measure, and inevitably found wanting. Lúthien must have at least enjoyed a full stomach when she was remaking the makeup of the land in her new home. Elwing holds the Silmaril in her hands, and it has never felt heavier when she thinks about the difference between herself and her grandmother, a woman who feels as if she stepped straight out of a legend. It has never felt heavier when she dwells upon her empty stomach, on the grumbling voice threatening to break into a roar regarding how long it has been since her last meal.

 _You needn’t worry about that_ , the Silmaril does _not_ say, not exactly, but when she focuses her attention upon the miraculous and uncanny jewel in her hands, a sensation washes over her that carries such an intent with it. Elwing will never forget her hunger, not truly, but she lets that sensation wash over her, and her hunger seems like less of an issue.

“I’m going to try to work with it,” she says to him, running her fingertips over the surface of the Silmaril the way another would pet the fur of their cat. “I… I do not know what the result will be.”

Eärendil says nothing, merely nods encouragingly to her, and Elwing… When Elwing pauses to examine her emotions, she finds that she is grateful for that. She cannot think of a single word in any language under the watchful eye of Anor that would imbue her with the confidence to go forward in this experiment with absolutely not a single second thought, without a single nagging thought regarding her fitness to do such a thing, or rather, her lack thereof.

The moment has come. There is nothing left to do but try.

Elwing focuses her attention on the Silmaril, every last grain of her attention that she can manage. It’s not as easy as she thought it would be. Whenever she has the Silmaril out and in her sight, her attention is drawn to it, of course—she cannot imagine just how unnatural someone would have to be, for them to be within the sight of the Silmaril and not have their eyes drawn to its light—but not to the exclusion of everything else, not yet. Perhaps there will come a day when she can look at the Silmaril and see and hear and smell nothing else, and there is a part of Elwing that ruminates upon that awaited day with longing, but for now, though the greater part of her attention is immediately riveted upon the Silmaril, she is still aware of aught else around her. There is Eärendil, sitting in a low chair before her. There are the walls of the house, creaking slightly in the wind that batters upon all the houses of the Lisgardh, as it does at every last time of year, if in different degrees. There is the muggy heat climbing in through the windows, clinging to Elwing’s skin and making her hair puff out like cattails that have started to turn. There is the quiet voice of the earth, beckoning her towards it and away from the Silmaril. There is the heaviness in her heart, growing just a little heavier at the thought of treading a path her father and her grandmother once trod, and not being able to follow them to the finishing line, not being able to follow them at all. There is the pain in the pit of her stomach, asking her when her next meal will be. She is yet aware of all of these things, and they are what she will have to work to push past, if she wants to make this work.

Elwing focuses her attention on the Silmaril. All her thoughts are turned towards it. She knows not the secret of the Silmaril’s construction, which would certainly have helped her in working to push past the inflexible casing to the substance within. She knows not the secret of the Silmaril’s construction, which would no doubt have given her a clue of how to work with the unknown, incandescent substance beneath the equally mysterious casing. She knows not the secret of how Lúthien worked with the Silmaril to make already fair Tol Galen into a place that was, for as long as her power lasted, a place that was utterly deathless. She knows not the secret of how her father did whatever he did with the Silmaril in Doriath, to make Doriath’s last few years as an extant kingdom on the face of this earth an even fairer place than it had been at the height of Melian’s power.

She knows not what to do. All that there _is_ for her to do is to focus her will upon the Silmaril, focus her mind upon it as much as she can without becoming… She knows not where that particular train of thought would have taken her, had she followed it to its conclusion. That seems to be the order of the day, though, doesn’t it? Elwing knows not what to do. All there is for her to do is try to muddle through, and find out.

Elwing focuses all of her will upon the Silmaril. She tries to ignore Eärendil looking at her, for she knows that she would have gotten caught up in his eyes and the slope of his jaw and how he looks when he’s smiling at her, and that will break her concentration and make a complete fiasco of this whole endeavor. Elwing focuses all of her will upon the Silmaril.

She can hear it singing, but it sounds louder, now. This is the first time she has ever focused her will upon the Silmaril so intensely, and the song that has always been soft in her ears is steadily growing louder and louder, slowly at first, but then it gets louder all at once, like Elwing has been swimming out in the Sea, and the water in her ears has managed to trickle out and all at once, she can hear the roaring of the Sea again. The song floods her ears like the Sea would, but it is more enticing than the Sea, for this is the music of the Ainur, but it is not diluted by water, not at all. It’s just… there. It’s just present.

Elwing does not know how to manipulate such a power as that. Such a power as that is totally beyond her. There’s a little of that music in her own veins, of course. There’s a little of the music of the Ainur in the veins of every living thing beneath Anor and Ithil, as well as those things that have never ventured above ground to feel their light upon their skin. Even in the twisted creatures serving the Enemy in the far north, there is that music, for all the world knows that the Enemy can create nothing truly knew, but can only distort and mutilate the creations of the One to his purposes. This music composes the invisible threads that bind all life together, composes that material which allows all things to coexist on this earth together, no matter how dissonant they might all seem from each other.

And Elwing has a little more of that music in her blood than does anyone else in the Lisgardh. The blood of the Ainur, however diluted, is in her body, pulsing through her veins. The Ainur are composed of that music, and that share of power has allowed Elwing to discern things that might be hidden or incomprehensible to others. (At least, that’s what she thinks is going on. There is an alternative to it, but she does not wish to contemplate it. She does not care to contemplate it. She does not want to think of herself that way, at least not any more than she already does, does not want to see herself the way others sometimes see her, not any more than she has to.) There might be a little something she can do with it. She tries to tell herself that, as she envelops herself in the song spilling out of the Silmaril, as its glow seems to brighten and brighten and brighten. She tries to tell herself that, as she lets the song into her own body and mind, tries to think of anything at all that she can do with it.

The song has drowned out all other noise, and Elwing, who is having a hard enough time _thinking_ as it is, decides that thinking at all might be the wrong approach. She pushes thought out of her mind, and—

And her mind is flooded with those sensations that have come to her whenever she pays heed to the Silmaril, but stronger, so much stronger. Soon, those sensations are all she know, all she can dwell on, all she can remember.

She can see the Lisgardh, but a different sea of reeds than the one Elwing has always known. She sees the houses, and they are still mud brick, but they look stronger now, more solid. The walls have been painted white and yellow and blue the color of the morning sky in winter and a pale, shimmery orange that warms the heart to look at it, though Elwing could never tell you why. Their roofs are made of bright red brick, gleaming in the sunlight, and not a single roof is missing a shingle, not a single roof sags, not a single roof looks as if it has needed to be replaced recently.

The ground, too, is different. Rather than the typically damp sandy soil Elwing has known, there are paved streets of white stone that gleam as if freshly white-washed under the morning sunlight. Little garden plots have been planted directly into the soil out front and back of the houses, but rather than withering in soil impregnated with saltwater, they thrive, large, lustrous leaves quivering gently in the breeze, berries glistening as if freshly sprayed with water, large gourds weighing down the rest of the plant as they sit proud on the ground. A trio of hens dart across the street, followed soon after by a rooster.

And the people…

It’s not as if the denizens of the Lisgardh have ever gone about in rags, at least once the first few months of their poor little lives in the reed sea had passed them by. They have been able to procure for themselves clothes that, though they are not by any means the equals of what they wore when they lived in Doriath, in Gondolin, in whatever places the Edain in the camp originally hailed from, are at least whole, and keep out the elements. Though some of those clothes are threadbare, though many of them are patched, they at least cover the body as much as is required.

These people Elwing sees now do not bear much resemblance to the people she has known, as they are in the Lisgardh. Their clothes are still not the finery she has heard described of the royal court in Menegroth, not as the scraps of cloth she has seen in her chests at home. Their clothes are not the finery she has heard tell of, but it’s a close thing. She sees none of the muted shades that have been their lot, but clothes in rich, vibrant hues of scarlet and crimson and golden and ochre, cerulean and turquoise and minty green and lavender and rich, coal blacks and silver and teal and indigo and delicate, shimmery rose pink. The materials might not be the silks of Doriath, or the silks and satins and velvets of Gondolin, but the richness of their tones must make up for that entirely, especially for the Iathrim, who had always held the richness of the colors of their garments to have just as much importance as the fineness of the fabrics by which they are constructed.

Sunlight serves as her aide once again, for the clouds raising overhead have parted entirely from the Lisgardh, and little glint of gold and silver and bronze and copper catch Elwing’s eyes from all directions, glinting at people’s necks and belts and throats and ears. Most of their jewelry is unadorned metal, but those whose ornamentation incorporates jewels wear pearls, primarily. The exceptions are clearly older pieces—though there is no visible sign of age, there is the _weight_ of age upon them—things salvaged from Menegroth and Gondolin years and years ago. Those glitter with rubies and emeralds and sapphires, though amethysts are especially prized by the Exiles, especially those of rich, dark hues, and Elwing sees many more of those.

Elwing gets so caught up on the richness of their dress, that it’s a few moments before her gaze can drift upwards to examine more closely the bodies of those people who mill about her in the streets—streets!—of the camp (actually, it looks more like a _town_ , which is something she can barely grasp as she is now, but will spend a great deal of time dwelling on later) to more closely examine their faces. And there is the most astonishing change of all, the most heartening, the most enticing and _tormenting_.

It’s not that no one ever smiles in the camp. _Elwing_ rarely smiles, but Elwing’s temperament is not shared by everyone around her. Indeed, it’s shared by relatively few people, and most everyone else seems determined to make the best of things, regardless of how closely they edge total destruction (Imagine if the fires they light at night are spotted, imagine if someone notices the shipments of food being sent to the mouths of the Sirion, imagine if, if, if…). It’s not strange to see people walking these streets—streets!—smiling, but there is something else that it takes her a moment to notice, and then, it’s all she can see.

The mark of hunger cannot be found in a single, solitary face Elwing watches pass her by. She does not see the pinch in the cheeks, does not see the stretch of skin over jaw and cheekbone, does not see the gleam burning bright in the pits of the eyes, somehow so distinct from the dead, static light shining in the eyes of the Lechind that she can immediately distinguish the two whenever confronted by it. They all look…

Elwing sees a vision of the Lisgardh, as a place where people can eat their fill. She sees a vision of it as a place where people always have enough food to eat her fill, and no one ever goes to bed with hunger gnawing a hole in the pit of their stomach. Then, at last, she looks down, and looks at herself.

She has no mirror to look into, either one of glass or one of still water. Elwing has no mirror to look into to regard her face, for there is not even Eärendil here, and she cannot regard herself as reflected in his clear, poring eyes. All she can do is look down upon herself and see herself as she is in this vision, and…

She cannot remember a time when she has not been able to see the outline of her bones in the backs of her hands and in her wrists. She cannot remember a time when her arms have looked, even to her own eyes, so thin and fragile that they could be snapped like dry twigs. She cannot remember a time when she has not looked pitifully thin… before now. Now, she looks down at herself, and yes, her clothes are finer than any clothes she has worn before, but she scarcely has any attention to pay to that in the face of her _arms_. Her arms are bare as she prefers them, and just as pale as she remembers them, but there is _flesh_ there that wasn’t there before, her arms look soft and rounded and she can’t see the bones jutting out in the tops of her hands or out of her wrists, she never imagined that she could look like this, that she could look so prosperous, that she could look like someone who has never scrabbled in the dirt for—

Her stomach chooses that moment to contract and twinge so painfully that even the strongest fantasy in the world would not have been able to hold against it. And like that, the spell is broken, and she is back in the empty room in her little house, with Eärendil sitting in the low, rickety chair before her.

Elwing cannot stand to look at herself. She thinks she would scream. She focuses her gaze entirely upon Eärendil instead, and tries to ignore the way the skin pulls a little tight across his high cheekbones. “Alright,” she says, very softly, just a little subdued, “what happened, just now?”

It’s a moment before Eärendil replies to her. For a long moment, he does nothing at stare at her as if he’s never seen anything like her, as if her face is not a sight he has seen periodically for years now, as if he is seeing her for the very first time. But that moment passes, and he blinks, and shakes his head as if shaking off water, and says, uncertainly, “There was… there was a bright light.”

“And?” Elwing prompts him.

Eärendil shrugs again. He looks… If Elwing didn’t know better, she’d say he looks a little concussed. There’s no blood on the floor, so she can only guess that he did _not_ fall over while she was absorbed in the visions the Silmaril showed her, and that there’s no reason for him to actually look a little concussed. But before she can speak up regarding this, Eärendil goes on, just as uncertainly, “Things looked a little… They looked a little different for a bit. It’s…” He runs his hands through his hair. Those hands are shaking slightly. “It’s hard to put into words.”

Well, _that_ does not help her at all. Elwing bites her lip, swallowing down on any number of irritable replies that could have slipped through her teeth if she had not been watching for them. “Is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all?”

She watches as Eärendil visibly roots around for something to say. She can tell he’s doing that—his expressions are always remarkably open, more so than she would have ever expected of a young man who _is_ a prince, even if he is a prince in a place like this. She can tell he’s doing that, and usually, when she sees him doing something like that, it sparks something like concern within her, but now, she’s grateful for it. At least she can _see_ that he’s trying. At least she is not left to simply _hope_ that he’s trying for her.

Eärendil roots around in his mind for something to say to her, and at length, Elwing thinks he has found something, but then his face colors and he clamps his mouth firmly shut.

And if Eärendil thinks that that will be enough to keep her from getting the answer out of him, he’s got another thing coming. Elwing peers intently at him—when he tries to look away from him, she just shuffles around until he’s facing her again, and the only place for him to look is at her.

He laughs nervously. “Elwing, what—“

“You were going to say something,” Elwing presses, folding her arms tight across her narrow chest. The Silmaril is clenched tightly in her right hand, forever feeling like it’s about to fall out. Perhaps it would be better to hold it by the carcanet, instead. “What was it?”

Eärendil runs his teeth across his lower lip. “I’m… I’m sure you don’t want to hear me talking about it. It was pretty… Well, I don’t think it was particularly what you were looking for.”

Elwing tilts her head to one side, and instantly regrets it when she finds herself having to spit hair out of her mouth. Once she’s gotten all of her hair out of her face, she tells him firmly, “I would like to hear it, anyways. It could still be relevant.”

This gets her two raised eyebrows and a slightly terrified smile. “I was… I was just thinking of how well you looked,” he stammers. “You looked… you looked beautiful. I mean, you always look beautiful, but with the Silmaril, you looked… I don’t think I actually know how to describe it.”

Now, it’s Elwing’s turn to look away, Elwing’s turn to feel her face growing hot. She does not… She does not think she wishes to hear that, just now. Not when she has so recently come back down to earth, to a place where her body is her body and her body may never look as well as it did in the vision. She’s come back down to earth and she’s come back down to her body and when she thinks of how she looked in the vision, even that one short look, she _hates_ her body, hates the way it is now, hates that her body cannot match the vision, may never hope to match it.

“I’ll need to try this again,” she mutters, in lieu of anything else she could have said. “Many times, most likely. I don’t know if I can wield the Silmaril the way my grandmother did, but I don’t think she figured out how to do it overnight.”

Or maybe she did, because to Lúthien, none of the normal rules ever applied. Maybe Lúthien knew immediately what to do with the Silmaril, and Elwing simply is not her equal at all. But she was never going to be Lúthien’s equal, because there is not a single person on the face of the earth who is Lúthien’s equal, and Elwing never had any hope of even being at the front of the line, not being the sort of person that she is. All she can do is muddle through until she finds a solution, if there’s any solution to be found.

And Elwing does not particularly want anyone _else_ to bear witness to her ‘muddling through.’ Not one of her own people, who must see her at all times as ‘the queen.’ Not any of the Gondolindrim, who must surely regard her as something between an ally and an adversary, asides from Eärendil, who does not seem to regard her in such a light at all. Just him. She will only tolerate him seeing her like this.

So she asks him, very simply, “Will you come back, when I call for you?”

And Eärendil answers her, just as simply, “So long as I’m not onboard a ship and out on the water, then yes, I will.”

Uncertain of just what to say in the face of that, uncertain of just why it is that her heart feels suddenly like she’s wrapped it in harsh metal wire, Elwing simply nods, her arms still folded tight across her chest.

For now, Eärendil must leave her and go back to the Gondolindrim’s part of the camp, for while he might not have the sort of responsibilities that she does, he still has his responsibilities. Before he leaves, he goes to hold her, to envelop her in his arms, and Elwing lets him, leaning into his embrace, drinking in the warmth of his body, a warmth more welcoming and less oppressive than the muggy air around him. It’s not that she feels eager for it, so much as it feels like the only natural thing to be doing. When he’s here, when it’s like this, it’s the most natural thing in the world, and even if it doesn’t make Elwing smile, it still makes the sudden pain in her heart lessen a little. And she always hates it when it’s over.

But it must be over eventually, and Elwing must find herself alone again eventually. She paces up and down the length of the little room, holding the Silmaril in her hand, her fingers skating up and down the carcanet. She must try again, and she must try _harder_. She’s already proven that she can do _something_ with the Silmaril. She knows she can derive visions from it, knows that she can hear its song when no one else can. Now, to find a way to harness that song, harness that vision.

The vision…

To see that again, Elwing thinks she could spend the rest of her life chasing it.

-

Elwing learns quickly that chasing is not all it’s cracked up to be. (She thinks she has learned the sum of such a lesson. She is wrong. She is more wrong than she could know. But she will learn better, in time.) Lúthien had only a few short years to master the Silmaril, and _she_ mastered it within a matter of weeks, to hear the tales tell true. Elwing might not be her grandmother’s equal in _anything_ , but she had hoped that she could take the rate of Lúthien’s progress as _some_ sort of marker.

Not to be. For Elwing, it is months upon months of visions, months upon months of Eärendil being able to tell her nothing beyond the presence of a bright light, brighter than is typical for the Silmaril, and her looking ‘well,’ to show for her efforts. Nothing to show for her efforts but failure.

(She will not ask herself until much later if she truly wished to succeed, at least at this venture. She will not ask herself such, because the conscious mind would scream that _yes_ , she did wish for success. The conscious mind would bristle at any implication that she did _not_ want success, that she was perhaps seeking failure instead. But there will come a time, when she thinks clearly at last, and then, she can ask herself that question. The visions are wondrous fair, and show her everything she has ever dreamed of creating within the Lisgardh. They do not show her anything greater than that, do not show her Doriath or her family restored, and perhaps that is part of the problem, for if they showed her something obviously out of her reach, she might have been able to be honest with herself sooner. But as it is, it will be years before the question is ripe within her mind.)

Elwing has her duties as queen of the Iathrim, duties that grow greater with each passing year, for she grows swiftly to maturity after the manner of the Edain (as her father must have, for a truly Edhel child would still _be_ a child, at the age Dior would be, were he still alive today), though Elwing has never felt any kinship with that people, has never felt so rootless as to make plausible her spirit flying away from the earth upon her death. She has her duties, and they are many, so many that she has scant few hours in the day to devote to other pursuits, on those days when she has any such time at all.

She has little time for the Silmaril, though she feels like it beckons to her at all hours. She has little time for the Silmaril, and thus, progress is slow. It cannot be the only reason that progress is so slow, but then, this can’t help, either.

It is rather like searching for something hidden on the other side of a curtain, only you are not permitted to push the curtain aside to aid in your search. You can only probe at it with your nervous, uncertain hands, can only wait for the light to shine through it and see if it illuminates any strange shadows, anything that could serve as a hint. If you have some idea of what you’re looking for, the game is not so difficult. If you have no idea at all, then the conditions have hamstrung you, and you are at a serious disadvantage.

Hunger is Elwing’s constant companion in those lonely hours—lonely even when Eärendil shares them with her; her repeated failures only serve to underscore how _alone_ she is, how bereft of any true teachers—keeping her awake and aware. Of course, hunger is Elwing’s constant companion through all her days and all her troubles, but there is something more acute about it, when she tries to find a way to wield the Silmaril. She has seen visions of a world where she does not have to be hungry. She has seen visions of a Lisgardh where no one goes hungry, and she cannot stop herself from imagining what sorts of meals they must enjoy in that otherworld, what sort of _feasts_ they must hold. It hurts her, which spurs her hunger on, which merely hurts her worse.

It’s months before Elwing can find anything different.

It’s long before that when people start to whisper of the odd shine in her eyes, whisper of how reminiscent it is of those who have gone before her.

But still, it will be months before Elwing finally notices something different. It will be months before she notices the chink in the song put off by the Silmaril, the empty space waiting to be filled. And it will be a long time after that before she finally figures out what there is that can be done with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lechind** —'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Ñoldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Ñoldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (singular: Lachend) (Sindarin)  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Use of what is implied to be an in-universe slur]

On the day of her wedding, Elwing does naught with the Silmaril but wear it. She is too tired to attempt anything else, and it is the first time she has worn the Silmaril openly. That is momentous enough. That, by itself, feels enough like walking over the edge of a cliff that Elwing does not wish to tax herself any further. She will be spending enough time today dwelling on the weight of the carcanet pulling on her neck, enough time fearing grasping, greedy hands, without adding any additional source of distress into the mix.

Her wedding, she thinks, ought to be a happy time for her. It isn’t.

It is not that she’s not happy to be getting married. Eärendil is… It is difficult for Elwing to describe just what he is. The words are all wrapped up in wire, too close to her heart. She could never hope to dislodge them without destroying her heart, and after that, could never hope to untangle them, for her fingers would surely run red with blood from the keen and hungry edges. It’s not that Elwing is not happy to be getting married. The happiness stings her like the sting of a wasp, but it is not what saps her joy.

Eärendil has his parents, still. Lady Idril and Tuor have both been hinting at a planned departure (sailing to the Undying Lands is madness, but it is _their_ madness, and Elwing knows not the words to dissuade them) for some time now, but have put it off, so as not to miss their son’s wedding. Eärendil’s wedding band comes from what was once his own father’s wedding band, and Thranduil donated some of his own jewelry to be melted down, to make up Elwing’s offering. But Elwing has no one to stand with her on this day, not a smiling mother or smiling father, nor two smiling older brothers. Or perhaps they would not be smiling. Enough of her people have made disgruntled noises about this union, have looked askance upon their queen marrying a son of the Exiles, that perhaps her family would have shared their opprobrium. But she will never know, _will_ she? She comes alone to be wed, and can never know what her family would have thought of her new husband.

Still, Elwing tries to paste a smile to her face. People expect her to smile when she’s getting married. Smiles rarely accurately reflect the emotions inside, but everyone expects her to smile at a time like this, and so she does. She only hopes she will not be hearing whispers later about how odd and forced her smiles looked. She does not think she would bear up under that with much patience.

But Elwing does not think that there will be too many comments on her smiles, on whether or not her smiles look genuine or forced. She does not think that anyone will remember the way her face looked on this day of all days, not even later on _this_ day. There is something else going on that has effectively drawn everyone’s attention away from her and Eärendil, and she does not know whether to be grateful for this, or not. She does not know whether to be wary of this development, or not.

Princess Duileth has never before graced the Lisgardh with the honor of a visit, not since she departed the mainland to take up residence on the Isle of Balar. Still, Elwing does not know the reason why she or her husband, who _has_ appeared here today, following behind in her shadow—she is told that there has been a lot of that, that there’s been a lot of Oropher following behind in Duileth’s shadow, ever since they were married; considering the man would have no rank and no importance except through his wife, perhaps he has decided that those around him will forget that he has any sort of importance at all, if he does not stay in sight of his wife at all times, to remind others of his connection to her—removed themselves from the Lisgardh to go dwell on the Isle of Balar. Thranduil talks around the issue whenever she enquires regarding it, though he does so with such a dark, stormy expression on his face that Elwing is starting to get an idea, and that idea is not trending in the direction of them having simply decided that it was safer out on an island in the Sea than on the mainland. Thranduil has not spoken to his parents since they appeared in the Lisgardh earlier today, completely without fanfare or warning. Thranduil has barely even acknowledged him, much to his mother’s displeasure. Elwing does not think she will have such a luxury as that.

And sure enough, Duileth turns away from the Iathrim lord with whom she was speaking, her eyes lighting on Elwing’s slight figure. Elwing drinks in the sight of her in silence, letting the smile fall from her mouth to adopt a considerably more neutral expression—neutral expressions are much more natural to Elwing’s face, though she sometimes thinks that what is in actuality dour is simply taken to be neutral by those around her—as she regards this kinswoman of hers. She has never seen Duileth before, and there is… there is much to see.

Princess Duileth of the Iathrim is among the eldest of their number yet living. She is Elmo’s daughter, born under starlight to a world before Doriath was a name ever whispered on people’s lips. She is tall and proud, and as Elwing looks at her, she has the uncomfortable awareness that Duileth is much more what people expect when they think of an Iathrim queen. Duileth _is_ tall and proud, where Elwing is nothing of the sort, a short slip of a young woman, who though she stands up straight never seems to be standing proud—Elwing would argue that there is nothing to stand proud _about_ , but such an explanation has never satisfied those determined to take issue. She is tall and proud, and her hair is starlit silver, her features strong, her eyes blazing and piercing even in midday sunlight, holding fast all they touch upon.

She has the commanding look of a queen, and her garments, at least by the standards of the Lisgardh, recall a reigning queen as well. Elwing pulled out her best clothes for this occasion, and it is not as though Duileth goes around in the sorts of silks that you would have expected to see in the royal court of Menegroth in its heyday, but still, Elwing cannot help but be aware of the disparity. Duileth’s clothes are linen and wool, of roughly the same texture and fineness as Elwing’s, but the colors are much sharper and clearer, the patterns markedly less faded, all of it bolder and brighter and more eye-catching than Elwing’s attire. The only thing about Elwing’s attire that would really catch the eye is the shining jewel bound to her neck.

 _She looks more like a queen than I do_.

Perhaps that is the point of this. Elwing hopes not. She hopes not. She does not want to deal with such things on her wedding day. But Thranduil took one look at his mother when she came in here, and then refused to speak to her, and all those who have not yet spoken with Duileth are staring at her like they expect her to draw a dagger or make a challenge, and Elwing does not know what she might find herself dealing with on this day of days.

At least, Elwing thinks, once Duileth finally tears her gaze away from the man she was speaking with, and lets her eyes light on Elwing for the first time, Eärendil has gone away to the Gondolindrim side of things. She knows enough to know that having her husband at her side would be unlikely to make any conversation with Duileth a sanguine one. Duileth is looking at her with her lips pursed and her bright eyes slightly narrowed, looking Elwing up and down, and her lips just purse more once she’s concluded her inspection, and whatever might have come of that—and Elwing has a feeling that Duileth has come to the same conclusion as her, regarding who looks more like a queen—Elwing does not think having her new husband glued to her side would have made the first impression any more favorable.

And at least, Elwing does not come to her. That would not be appropriate, she knows. She has waited for lords of both the Iathrim and the Gondolindrim to come to her before. In both cases, she has sometimes had to wait a long time before they finally drop all pretenses of waiting for her to come to them. Even if Elwing does not look like much of a queen in comparison to Princess Duileth, she can at least act a little like one.

As it is, Duileth stands still, regarding Elwing in contemplative silence, for several minutes, before she finally reaches the point of picking up her feet and coming over to where Elwing stands. She does not bow, but then, Elwing does not expect bows of lords of such high rank as the daughter of the first king’s brother. Celeborn has never bowed to her before, and neither has Thranduil. They share blood, even if they are not closely related to be the family that Elwing has lost. You do not expect these things of shared blood.

“Elwing,” Duileth greets her at last, her face giving nothing way, and her voice giving even less. “You have grown since last we met.”

Considering that Elwing was little more than a babe in arms when last they met, considering that Elwing was so small that she _was_ carried most of the way from the ruins of Menegroth to the Lisgardh, that is not much of a surprise. “I imagine so,” she says honestly, caring perhaps less than she should if that gives offense.

And whether or not it does give offense, Elwing honestly cannot tell. Duileth continues to stare at her, her expression totally unreadable, though Elwing wonders if she might not be able to read something into the way Duileth’s eyes keep flickering between Elwing’s face, and what she wears around her neck. ( _Is Duileth covetous of jewels_? Elwing wonders, wishing suddenly that she had a dagger, though what she would do with it, she—) It’s the sort of thing that leaves Elwing very tempted to stretch out her will and go knocking on the doors to Duileth’s mind, searching for a chink to peek through, but she stays her hand. A wedding is no place for a fight.

(Later, Eärendil will try to tell her that it’s not a _proper_ wedding without a fight. Well, what he says, exactly, is that it’s not a proper wedding until something’s been broken, something’s been spilled, somebody’s nose has been bloodied, someone’s been sent out crying, and two members of the wedding party have been found necking in a cupboard somewhere. The image that all conjures makes Elwing very glad that this wedding was held according to her people’s customs, rather than his.)

At last, probably think she’s making Elwing sweat a little, though Elwing cannot be sure of the motivation and only be certain that she is not sweating at all, Duileth opens her mouth to speak. “I must confess, I was surprised to see you wear that—“ her eyes flick to the Silmaril once again; Elwing has to fight to keep her itching hand from jumping to her throat “—so openly. And among the Exiles, too."

Elwing pauses a moment, now battling as well the urge to bite her lip; it would make her seem as a child, which she does not think would elevate her in Duileth’s eyes, not at all. She weighs her potential words in her mind, picking them apart for whatever would seem least childish to this woman who must regard both Ithil and Anor very young creations, indeed. At last, Elwing decides that something resembling bravado, if a bit more measured, would be best, though bravado sits about as naturally on her shoulders as would a yoke. “Should I fear those who have chosen to share in the struggles and the perils of this place?” she asks quietly, as measured as she can manage. “Should I forever live in fear of a people who have already been beaten nearly into the dust?”

She does not know why it is that Duileth left the Lisgardh behind her. Elwing has a feeling that, after this day, she will be devoting a larger part of her time to trying to divine the answer. But it’s not as if she has heard _nothing_ of this cousin of hers. Many of the lords of the Iathrim take immense pride in their people, and Duileth is a shining example of such. Is it not more prudent to play to her pride, to count on it to sway her decision making, even if Elwing is careful to play to it only gently?

It was more prudent, it would seem, for Duileth’s face colors gently, and she shakes her head. “I would hate to see a world,” she mutters, “in which she who is counted queen of our people finds all of her decisions influenced by her fear of these kin of Kinslayers. No, indeed, Elwing. I do not believe that you should make these decisions based on what would provoke the Exiles least.”

It wasn’t about provocation, not to Elwing. It was about… She does not wish to dwell upon what it was about, on this day of days. (Couldn’t have her father here to see this, could not have her grandmother or her great-grandfather here to see this. Couldn’t have them here to be happy for her, or to protest her marrying a son of the Exiles. This is what she has instead. This is what she has instead, and she will not hide it. Anyone who might complain, either about the risk or simply about the light, would be best advised to consider why it is that Elwing has been left custody of the Silmaril in the first place. Their criticisms would surely shrivel and die in their mouths, once they have considered that question, and its answer.) She does not wish to dwell upon it. She wants to be happy, though happiness insists on flitting in and out of her reach.

She wants to be happy. Is that not what anyone wants, on their wedding day? The weight of the carcanet and its jewel is a comforting one upon her neck. Even if Elwing must forever be wary of thieves, she still feels that comfort driving into her bones. Fear of loss cannot take it from her in entirety.

It’s up to other factors to ensure that.

Elwing and Duileth walk a little way away from the wedding-goers nearby. Elwing can sense that there is more that Duileth would like to say, and that perhaps she would prefer to say it where there are fewer people to hear. Or perhaps it is Elwing who would rather Duileth spoke where there were fewer people to hear what she has to say. Elwing cannot say for certain. Either one would suit her. And it suits her just fine that Duileth follows her lead, in this.

When the noise of the other conversations has died down to a susurrus not unlike the Sea at low tide from perhaps a mile and a half away, when they are alone with setting Anor and dismal little houses made even more dismal by the lengthening shadows, Duileth takes a long look around her and heaves a long sigh. For the first time, some emotion that Elwing can actually recognize enters into her face. She recognizes it well and easily. Discontented bitterness is something Elwing has every reason to recognize in every possible face it could enter.

“I could strangle the Kinslayers in their sleep for reducing us all to this,” Duileth mutters sourly, grinding her teeth so hard that Elwing thinks she can _hear_ her doing it. “How far removed we are from the glory of Menegroth.”

Elwing draws a deep breath through her nose. This, too, was not something she wished to dwell upon on her wedding day. It is too late. She has been drawn into it so surely that she does not think she could escape without giving it more heed than she thinks it due, on this day. “I…” The words sit heavily in her mouth, ponderous and bitter, trying to goad her into giving more out, though Elwing swallows the impulse down. “I do not know much of the glory of Menegroth.”

That, at least, is true. She had been fed tale after tale after tale of it, but if you have never seen something for yourself, how much can you ever truly know of it? That thing must still be strange to you, if you have never laid eyes on it, never seen it or heard it or smelled it, never put your hands upon it to drink in its weight. Elwing is queen of the Iathrim, but she is not a child of Menegroth. She is not a child of a thousand glittering caves. She is a child of reeds and sand and Sea. She is a child of the desolation of these evil years, a child of the desolation wrought by evil men. She is not complete without Menegroth. She does not think she ever can be complete.

This answer hardly pleases Duileth, though Elwing knows not the answer that could have pleased her. Even agreeing with her would likely have only sent her further down into her own bitterness. “Indeed.” Duileth entertains a small, harsh laugh. “See what we have been reduced to, that our queen knows nothing of our rightful home.” The movement of her mouth that had precipitated the laugh shifts into a smile, though it is not, Elwing notes, as Duileth directs it towards her, something that especially meets her eyes. “But that is not something _you_ are to bear blame for. I have not forgotten, Elwing.”

And Elwing did not wish to entertain the shadows of her family’s butchers on this day of days. That was always going to be a fool’s errand, she is aware. They were always likely to ooze into her consciousness somehow. But still, she had hoped to put it off for as long as she could. She had even hoped that perhaps she would not think of them until night fell and she and Eärendil were finally, blessedly alone. She had hoped that the only thing that could recall the Kinslayers were the red lights that would dance on her bedroom wall once night came to find them and the Enemy set his fires to steal their joy away from them.

It is difficult to reprove Duileth for conjuring the shadows of such uninvited guests, when it seems inevitable that someone else would have done it eventually, if not her. A drunken rant, perhaps, or some crying in the night. The Kinslayers are skillful at inspiring such responses, and Elwing goes a few days at the most in between new variations on such. It seems impossible that she would never have had to confront their memory here, and now.

It is difficult to reprove Duileth for what she has done, yet all the same, Elwing cannot quite keep from glaring at her as she says next, “I wonder if I would have had more knowledge of my rightful home, had more of my people stayed by my side to teach me of it.”

This is dangerous, and Elwing does not think she would have said it, on any other day. This is dangerous, and Elwing does not think she would have said it if she was not wearing the Silmaril around her neck, if it did not lend her its song and its power. The second impression has more appeal than the first, and so perhaps Elwing _would_ have been able to confront Duileth if Duileth had come on another day, if only Elwing was wearing the Silmaril as well upon that day. What she is certain of, though, is that though it is dangerous to confront her at all, even so indirectly as this, it would have been an impossibility if there were any witnesses to the confrontation. Elwing is not a ruler such as Thingol was. She does not think she has either the temperament or the security to make even oblique accusations successfully, without faltering or being cut off by the accused, when surrounded by witnesses. Too many eyes on her at once, far too many eyes.

This is dangerous, and for a moment, Elwing thinks that Duileth will bear the danger out. Her eyes flash, her jaw tightening in a sudden shoot of anger, and though Elwing is wary, she finds herself growing just a little angry, herself. There are perils on the Isle of Balar, certainly, but the perils of living in the Lisgardh are greater still, and Duileth, who chose to forsake this place for a home where greater safety could be enjoyed, a home where she could never be roused to take part in the struggles of Ennor except by her own choice, has rather little room to make comments on how little Elwing knows of Doriath in its splendor. Actually, forget ‘rather little room.’ Duileth has no room at all to be making such comments, when she could easily have rectified the matter herself.

Duileth remains in that state, eyes flashing and jaw tight, for so long, that Elwing starts to think that when she next opens her mouth, it will be to shout. Her son is given to sudden fits of anger, at times, though those fits have never been directed against Elwing herself. Thranduil is given to sudden fits of anger, and it only makes sense for him to have gotten that trait from _somewhere_. If not Oropher, and it is probably not Oropher, whom Elwing has seen little of, but whom seems to have a knack for making everyone but himself angry, then Duileth is the most likely person for him to have inherited the trait from.

(Does such a judgment hold for Elwing herself? It seems to her that for children to inherit traits from their parents, they must _know_ their parents, must know them long enough and well enough to mark those traits and deem them worth emulating, for one reason or another, consciously or unconsciously. Can such a judgment hold for Elwing? She has heard comments, from time to time, either directed to her face or spoken where the speaker thinks, mistakenly, that she cannot hear them, comparing her to one or another of her parents. They speak of traits that she _must_ have inherited from them, and she wonders forever how she could possibly have inherited any traits at all from two parents she cannot remember, two specters in the back of her mind whom she can never put faces to. Can such a judgment hold for Elwing?)

Duileth remains in that state a long time, but eventually, she masters herself. When she takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes, when she slowly lets the tension out of her jaw, Elwing lets a little tension out of her back, though she’d not realized she was holding it. It is, in retrospect, ridiculous for her to have expected any true harm to have come of this. These days are not the days before Doriath’s destruction, days when it would be totally ridiculous to expect an Edhel to do harm to another Edhel here in Beleriand. But Duileth is a lord of the Iathrim, and Elwing the queen of the Iathrim. The lords of the Iathrim are not Kinslayers, nor even the sort of reprobates who would do harm to one another, or the one they hold to be their queen. It was foolish to fear such from Duileth. (So Elwing tells herself, every time she remembers the way Duileth’s hands quivered as they tried to curl into fists.)

“Perhaps,” Duileth concedes, with a brittle smile. “Indeed, it seems unlikely that any could have provided you with a better account than I, given my involvement in Menegroth’s construction.”

At this, Elwing allows her curiosity to be piqued. It will steer them away from what has given offense to them both, and perhaps allow Duileth to leave with a more favorable impression. “The construction? No one has told me of that.”

Duileth laughs, but it is a gentler laugh than her smile, which is softening as well, into something more reminiscent than brittle. “That does not surprise me. Everyone forgets that more people than Thingol and the Naugrim had a hand in the construction of Menegroth. They are ever uneager to give me my proper due.”

When she meets Elwing’s eyes anew, the look in them is a little softer, almost as if they share some secret between them, though of course, they do not—Elwing knows none of her secrets, and cannot hope to divine them without delving into Duileth’s mind, an action she knows would do nothing to endear her to Duileth, an action that she knows would send an important and powerful lord of the Iathrim away fuming at the behavior of her queen. Elwing must hold back, for now. She is undying, so long as violence does not find her. Yes, that is quite a lot to hope for, in days such as these, but her nature is that of an undying body, an undying mind, and a spirit that will stay tethered to the earth, for as long as she cares to be. She has time to wait. She has time to try and wheedle Duileth’s secrets out of her, if it becomes a matter of urgency.

“This is not an appropriate time or place to discuss it all,” Duileth goes on, looking back to regard the wedding attendees with a strange, almost wistful expression stealing over her face. “Doubtless you have other concerns on this day; a new husband is always engrossing, or such has been my experience.” Given that she has only been married to one man over all of these years, Elwing can only suppose that Duileth is speaking of her experience observing other newly married couples. It’s the only thing that would make much sense to her. “But it is a tale I would like to tell you at another date, if no one has already.”

And to that, Elwing nods silently. To know more, even if it comes from a source she is not entirely certain of, it would… There are some days when she would argue that it would hurt her. There are days when she thinks it might cut her open, to dive deeper and deeper into the past, into a world that was locked away from her forever. When Duileth is gone from her present home, she will dwell upon this, will remember all of this, will wonder just what it is that she has agreed to. But for now, she is not thinking about that at all. She is thinking about the idea that she could perhaps foster a better, closer relationship with this eldest of her surviving kin, thinking about the idea of understanding Menegroth better, and through that perhaps understanding her family a little better, though she thinks a better understanding of Menegroth would most easily help her understand her mother. Nimloth spent more time in Menegroth than ever did Dior, or Eluréd or Elurín. But it would be something, at least.

“Hmm.”

Duileth does not… She does not look entirely pleased by that nod. Elwing does not know why, not exactly, though she can guess that the effort of traveling to and fro from the Isle of Balar, back to the mainland, back to the island, would have something to do with it. Though she does not know in full Duileth’s motivations in choosing to remove to the Isle of Balar, she can guess that the greater safety of the island would have had at least _something_ to do with it. And now she has committed herself to coming back here at least once, and committed herself to coming back here multiple times, if all parties involved are being _entirely_ realistic about this. A peevish, perverse part of Elwing takes this as something resembling a victory, though she knows it petty to regard it as such, especially regarding one of her kin. She is, after all, wanting to forge a better relationship with Duileth, or at least, forge a relationship with Duileth such that Elwing does not feel daunted by her, does not regard any subsequent visits of Duileth’s to the Lisgardh with any ambivalence to steal away her happiness. She would like to forge a strong enough relationship with Duileth that perhaps Thranduil would not respond as he has to his parents visiting them here.

“Hmm,” Duileth hums out again, linking her hands behind her back. She stares out at the wedding-goers chatting merrily at some distance from them, once again. “Do you know,” she says very softly, “that I attended your parents’ wedding in Menegroth. It feels like an eternity ago that it happened, now, though really, the years were quite short. Oh, I suppose you do _know_ , even if you have never thought of it in such terms. The wedding of the heir of Elu Thingol and one of Melian the Queen’s closest students was unlikely ever _not_ to draw a great deal of note. I think the whole kingdom may have been in attendance upon _that_ wedding—completely unlike when Lúthien wed her mortal Man.”

Yes, Elwing has heard of the very private wedding of Lúthien and Beren. There was a certain necessity to that privacy, considering that Thingol was so opposed to the union that he refused to even acknowledge that they _had_ married at all, when Beren was brought before him. Perhaps Lúthien’s foresight enabled her to understand that her father would be less than understanding. Perhaps Lúthien simply _knew_ her father, and knew how kindly he would take to any suitors. Or perhaps Lúthien simply reasoned that, as a woman who had been grown for many, many years, she did not need the consent of her parents any more than any _other_ adult woman who had been grown for many, many years would have needed the consent of her parents to wed, and did not consider that, as her mother and father were her queen and king, hers was not an entirely normal situation. Or perhaps she did consider it, and decided that she did not care. What many—no, most; no, all—agree on is that the normal rules never did seem to apply to Lúthien.

“This…” Duileth offers her a smile that it takes Elwing a moment to identify as being apologetic, for the look in her eyes is more bitter than apologetic. “…Is rather a far cry from your parents’ wedding. I imagine it is a far cry from the wedding of Idril and Tuor in Gondolin, as well, though that wedding could never have hoped to match Dior and Nimloth’s in Menegroth in splendor. The feasting alone lasted for a full week; I swear to you, I ate nearly half my weight in candied plums alone.”

At the mention of ‘feasting’, Elwing feels something inside of her shrivel like a flower left out too long in the sunlight in summer, without any water to freshen it. She’d not wanted to think about this during the wedding celebrations themselves. She had not wanted to think about it. She had dwelled upon it enough during the preparations; Elwing does not know the particulars of wedding feasts in Doriath, but she has _heard_ of them, and she knows that the tables would be generously laden at any wedding in Doriath. She knows that the wedding attendees would have been provided with a filling, generous meal. She knows that many of them no doubt are thinking about that today, no doubt thinking about other weddings they attended in the ghostly past, in the past where the ruins of their lost kingdom weave themselves back into something whole.

Elwing cannot give them that. She wishes it was otherwise. She wishes it was otherwise so strongly that sometimes she feels as if she might fall to pieces from wishing. She wishes that on this day of days, she could go without the dull ache in the pit of her stomach, but her wishing amounts to nothing, and this is the world she is left with. She thinks there are things she can do with the Silmaril, but her studies of it are yet in their infancy, and she is too tired on this day to do anything but wear it. So she is left with this: her wedding day, dressed in the finest clothes she owns, which are still poor and paltry compared to the finery of Doriath in its glory, without her parents when Eärendil at least has his own parents to watch him become the husband of a woman, with a dull ache in the pit of her stomach that never, ever goes away, not even when she’s eating.

She did not want to think about it.

She did not wish to dwell upon it.

She is thinking about it now. She is dwelling upon it now. She cannot help it. Her mind has been drawn to it against her will.

“This cannot compare,” Duileth murmurs. “Oh, that is not to criticize you, Elwing. Prudence dictates that meals not be here what they were in Doriath. It’s a fine thing to have a feast at a wedding, and rather less fine if that means that everyone goes hungry the day afterwards. Still, I do miss it. I imagine everyone does.”

Elwing wonders how it is that she can miss something she has never known. Elwing wonders why it is that she misses it, anyways.

-

“What on earth was it that woman said to you, to make you so upset?” Eärendil will ask her later, once they are alone with themselves and their thoughts. He is standing close by her as she puts the Silmaril back in its resting place (hiding place) in her chest, standing over her and the jewel both like a guard, a thought that gives Elwing some small comfort, though it cannot really push through the strange feeling, stronger and more painful than prickling, that washes over her at having to part from the Silmaril once again.

“I’m not upset,” Elwing says absently.

She doesn’t… She doesn’t feel upset. Or perhaps she does, but there’s so much to be upset about, all of the time, that she no longer recognizes the feeling properly. That could just as easily be the answer. Either way, she does not feel as if she will cry soon, and thus, whatever she is feeling does not rise to the level of giving it a label that Elwing would actually have to do something about.

Eärendil does not agree with that assessment never spoken, of course. Eärendil has a markedly different way of looking at the world and its travails. While Elwing is staring down at the outline of the Silmaril beneath the topmost of the pieces of cloth that cover it when it sits in this chest, hidden but never forgotten, Eärendil crouches down beside her, setting a hand on her arm, rubbing up and down from elbow to shoulder gently.

“Then why is it,” he asks her, “that you have clearly been able to focus on nothing but what she told you, since she left your side earlier today?”

Elwing braces her hands on the lip of the chest, fingers clenching tightly at wicker that feels altogether too fragile to hold something like the Silmaril. It’s not a matter of the weight of the jewel; if someone as small and as slight as Elwing can wear it around her neck with no trouble, it’s clear that the weight of the Silmaril should be of no trouble to anyone under Anor’s light. It’s a matter of the _sturdiness_ of the thing. Elwing does not think she would be content with the protections surrounding the Silmaril when she does not wear it if she was a queen in Menegroth, and she had access to the sturdiest treasure vault doors in all of Beleriand to keep the thing behind. She is certainly not going to be content with a wicker chest.

But a wicker chest is what she has, and going out to inquire about a sturdier chest would just let would-be thieves know that the current protections do not suffice, at least not in the eyes of the queen. Elwing cannot suffer such an outcome. She cannot suffer everyone around her knowing that the Silmaril is more vulnerable than they think, if they think it to be securely held. She cannot suffer the theft of what is hers.

She really cannot, you know. Here is the Silmaril, the receptacle and the purveyor of her dreams. She cannot have everything that she wants—she doubts that even the Silmaril, though it contains within the light of dead things, can resurrect the dead in truth—but she can have whatever it is she is capable of doing with the Silmaril. She can have what her meager power is capable of weaving with the Silmaril as an aid. If she loses that…

She should not think of it in such terms, she knows. Now that she is a married woman, she should consider her husband something that she has. But Eärendil is not a possession, but a person, and Eärendil’s eyes are drawn to the western horizon, even as his parents are, and though Elwing hopes that he will restrain himself from leaving, for _her_ sake, if no one else’s, she cannot count on it. She cannot count on it, when the Sea is singing in his veins. (Elwing has never had cause to dislike the Sea. She has never had any cause before. She had hoped she never would have any cause, but now she is a married woman, and she cannot ignore the way her new husband has, in the past, stared out west towards the Sea like he’s waiting for something, like he’s longing for something, like he wishes for something that only the Sea can provide him. She sees Eärendil staring out at the Sea like that, and she wonders if she likes the Sea so much, after all.) Eärendil may leave her, as much as Elwing does not wish him to. Eärendil may leave her behind, and if and when he does that, she will still have the Silmaril. She will have the Silmaril. All she will have is the Silmaril. She cannot lose it. She just can’t.

Elwing strokes her hand across the cloth she has put over the Silmaril, before she at last shuts the lid of the chest, and the room is plunged in the gloom of the dying day. She drums her fingers against the lid, and summons a weak smile when she finally looks at Eärendil. “Duileth gave me quite a lot to think about,” she tells him. “That is all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Naugrim** —‘The Stunted People’ (Sindarin); a term used by the Sindar amongst themselves for the Dwarves; given its meaning and that they apparently didn’t use the name in front of the Dwarves, the term is likely a pejorative.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma, Self-loathing, food insecurity]

Eärendil is giving her longer than she thought he would. Elwing does not know how long that will last, for as the months crawl by after his parents have gone away into what Elwing can only assume is an untimely death, though she is careful not to frame it in such a way to him, his eyes drag out to the west with increasing frequency, his mouth twisting and pulling as if fighting off some invisible hook driving into his flesh. She does not know how long it will last, this staying here of his. She wants to savor it. She wants to savor it so badly. She wants to savor it as badly as Eärendil wants to take to the Sea, and thus, their wants are matched, even if no mirror would agree.

So, for now, they are together. In the dark of their room at night, though that night is never complete in days such as theirs, when they must share the night with the red glow that, every year, seems to grow more intense upon the northern horizon, they are together, and Eärendil whispers to her. He whispers to her of so many things. He whispers of Gondolin, of the past as painted upon their dim ceiling by murmuring words and fingers feebly clutching at the air. He whispers of them, whispers of the sort of life they can have, as filtered through a veil of fantasy, as filtered through a veil of wishful thinking, and Elwing cannot bear to tell him that they _are_ just fantasies, that there is no path forwards towards making them something even vaguely resembling reality. And he whispers to her of the Sea.

Oh, yes, Eärendil whispers to her of the Sea, as if Elwing did not already know the Sea, but when Eärendil whispers to her, he whispers of a thing that Elwing does not recognize, at all. He speaks to her of the Sea, and he speaks to Elwing of a stranger, if the Sea can be something that is a known entity or a stranger.

Elwing knows the Sea as something that is great and terrible, yes. She knows the Sea as something that provides them with meager protection from the machinations of their greatest and most terrible Enemy. She knows the Sea as something that will never drown her, except by her own choice. The Sea she knows _is_ alive in its own way, but it’s a form of life totally alien to her thoughts—yes, even Elwing’s, Elwing’s thoughts, when her own thoughts seem so alien to everyone around her. The Sea is alive, but it’s not a form of being alive she can put a name to.

Eärendil speaks to her of the Sea, whispering into her hair in the dark, and he introduces to her the concept of distance and journey, of longing and searching, and being beckoned further and further out and on. Eärendil speaks of the Sea as something that is alive, yes, but he speaks of it as something that demands, rather than something that is, something that welcomes and shields and shelters, something that consumes, something that rages. He speaks of the Sea almost as one would speak of a lover, a lover who holds your heart in their hands and is none too gentle in their handling of it, and when Elwing must endure her husband speaking of it so…

She is being foolish. She has her Silmaril, has the visions it grants her. He has the Sea, and the haunting dreams it spins for him, has the hooks it sets in his flesh like a fisherman casts a hook into the lip of a fish to drag them up out of their own natural climes. They each have something that the other could argue stands in between him and her. She is being foolish, and will try to ignore those foolish urges that scald and sear within her breast.

( _The Silmaril will not take you away from him_ , she thinks, sometimes. _The Sea could well take him away from you, for months or years, or perhaps forever._ She is being foolish. She cannot stop herself from thinking it. The Silmaril roots her here, or roots her wherever she is—either way, it makes her easy to find. The Sea is rootless by its very nature, and it makes all that dwells upon its surface rootless by their own, new natures as well. She can see it all too easily: the Lisgardh in crisis, Elwing in dire need of her husband, and Eärendil nowhere to be found, with no one having even the slightest idea of where they would need to send the missives summoning him home.

She is being foolish. It is foolish to try to use that as a reason to keep him here against his will, when the Sea’s torment would only drive deeper into his flesh. It is foolish to try to use that as a reason to keep him here against his will, when all of Elwing’s reasoning could drive a wedge between them, poison the harmony that keeps them here in this bed at night, poison the affection that has Elwing seeking his hand when she wakes from an ill dream and finds an even worse sight bathing the bedroom wall in red. She still feels the impulse, regardless. She cannot keep it from rearing up within her.)

Eärendil is giving her longer than she had expected he would. She knows the sacrifice this is for him, the burden this puts upon him. It is not a sacrifice equal to the privacy and solitude Elwing sacrifices in her duties as queen the Iathrim. It is not a burden equal to the burden of being queen in a place such as this, trying to rule over a people she has no power to protect. But she knows it to be a sacrifice and a burden, all the same, and though it cannot be equal to the weight she feels ever pressing further and further and harder and harder down upon her shoulders and her back (she has heard some say that a head that bears a crown is always heavy; she has no crown to grace her brow, not even the plainest circlet, and this is by her own decree, for there are better uses the materials could be put to, but she knows that weight, all the same), she knows very well that it is not _nothing_.

It is for her sake, she knows. Oh, with his mother gone, Eärendil is now lord over the Gondolindrim in the camp, though his marriage to her technically brings the Gondolindrim closer under Elwing’s authority. Eärendil is now lord over the Gondolindrim, and perhaps care for his own people keeps him here as well, but Elwing knows the truth, the way she knows him. However much care for his own people and his obligations to them might nag at his mind and his conscience, it is not his primary concern. She is, and if she was not here, he might well appoint another to rule over the Gondolindrim in his place, and take to the Sea.

It is for her sake, and though there is little Elwing can do to make this arrangement sweeter for him, she feels impelled to at least _try_. If Eärendil is to cleave to this place at least somewhat against his will, then Elwing must at least _try_ to make his stay a little sweeter.

She sets her will against the Silmaril once more, and begins to pick that song it sings apart a little more.

(There are some who, if they knew the track of Elwing’s thoughts regarding her husband, might have told her that it would have been enough to him, for her to set her will to making his life with her more pleasant without bringing the Silmaril into the equation. There are many who would argue that she _should_ try and make things more pleasant for him without bringing the Silmaril into the equation. And then, there are those who would tell her that she should not go out of her way to make life better for him here, so he is less tempted to leave. There are those who would tell her that his love for her ought to be enough on its own, that she ought to be enough on her own. There are those who would tell her that if Eärendil leaves the Lisgardh behind, in spite of the fact that he would be leaving behind also a wife who cannot leave this place, because of her duties and her responsibilities and her obligations, then the fault is upon him, and not her. There are those who would tell her that Eärendil ought to have been thinking of his wife, and that his love for her ought to have been enough to keep him here.

But that isn’t realistic, and Elwing knows it. These same people would say that Thingol’s love for Lúthien should have been enough for him to accept Beren as his son-in-law from the start, instead of trying to make a widow of his own daughter. She understands _why_ they would say that a man should accept his daughter’s beloved husband instead of trying to make a widow of his daughter so that he does not have to look upon a son-in-law he considers an eyesore, she understands it perfectly well. Thingol did not just forsake kindness and common sense when he tried to make a widow out of his daughter; he effectively forsook _civilization_ , at least for a time. People do not behave rationally when it comes to the things they want, the things they love, the things they need, the things that exert power over them. Thingol is a prime example of that, but he’s hardly the _only_ one, now is he? Whatever Elwing is _owed_ , she cannot expect to receive it. Not in a world like this one.)

As always, Elwing does not have the sort of time she wishes she had to devote to unraveling these secrets and harnessing the power of the Silmaril for herself. Wearing it allows her to become more accustomed to the song, allows her to listen to the chords and the notes over and over and over again until she has memorized them perfectly. But Eärendil seems honestly to be wasting away and she does not wish to watch him deteriorate any further, it’s almost enough for her to try and persuade him to take to the Sea to refresh himself, though she thinks she might have to rip out her tongue to get the words of active encouragement out of her mouth, and she must do _something_ about it. Must do something, whatever it might be in her power to do.

She dives down, deeper and deeper down, so deep that on some occasions, she is no longer aware of the world as it exists. The only tether she has to the world she came from is the hunger tormenting her in the pit of her stomach, the constant ache of deprivation and loss made manifest in in her own privation. Elwing cannot imagine that her power will ever be the equal of Lúthien’s, cannot imagine that her power will ever be anything more than a pale shadow of Lúthien’s, but she must, must, _must_ try. It is necessary to try and keep her husband for a little longer. It is necessary to try and do something, anything that could give her people a better life than what they currently eke out, so far away from the ruins of their lost kingdoms. It is necessary to try and put some form of salve to the wounds that snake and crawl deep inside of her own body, invisible to all, even to herself, but still there, she can _feel_ them, she knows they’re there.

She must do this.

She must do this.

She must.

She must.

She must, she must, she must, she must—

-

Hunger will never leave her alone for long. The cutting wind will never leave her alone for long. The Sea will never leave her alone for long. The shifting sand beneath her feet will never leave her alone for long. Always, always, always, Elwing is assailed with reminders of just where she is, of just what sort of place she rules over, just _why_ she rules over it, she can never be allowed to forget that, the world will never allow her to forget that. But Elwing is not a powerless denizen of the world. It is not always easy to remember that, especially when she lies awake in her bed at night, and her bedroom walls are painted not black but dull, smoky red. It is not always to remember that she is not powerless, when she thinks of all that is arrayed against them. When she thinks of all that is arrayed against them, the Enemy and his Orcs, the Kinslayers and their wretched, blood-soaked followers, Elwing feels smaller than the most feeble mote of dust. She does not have her parents, her brothers, her grandparents, or her great-grandparents. She has herself, and the Silmaril. She must make do with that.

But she can make do with it, to some extent or another. She can make do with it, if she just tries hard enough, if she can just find the time to try…

Elwing has rather less free time than she did before, now that she is a married woman, and she had little free time to start with. Eärendil will often agree to sit with her and watch what it is she does with the Silmaril, to see if she can bring about any change upon their surroundings. She’s having some success with it, though the effects are always temporary, always drift away once she has removed the Silmaril from about her neck, or sometimes if she just stops thinking about it for a few hours. But there are times when Eärendil is not content to spend their time alone together watching Elwing try to make something of this blood-soaked heirloom of hers, and it’s cold comfort to him to know that she is doing this for his sake—or it must be, if Elwing was ever to tell him; she has not, has not, will not, _will_ not, cannot put that sort of pressure upon him, when there are already so many different pressures exerting their force upon him. There are times when he wishes to spend their time alone together differently, and it is… it is pleasant to Elwing, more than pleasant, and yet it is also a distraction from her work, a distraction from what she seeks to accomplish, it cannot banish the hunger gnawing at them all the time, it cannot change the reality of their lives in this miserable little camp in the Lisgardh.

Swallow your frustration, and go on. Swallow everything that would destroy what life you have, and go on.

Elwing pores over the Silmaril while Eärendil watches, and she pores over the Silmaril when she is totally alone. When she is totally alone, hands clasped around that jewel set in its carcanet, both so stunningly beautiful but the carcanet of no import next to the comforting _brilliance_ of the substance that swirls and shimmers inside…

When she is totally alone, and she contemplates the Silmaril, Elwing thinks, sometimes, that she is not really here.

It’s such an improbable story, is it not? Of all the members of her family who could have survived, why is it that it should be her? Is that likely? Is that _right_?

Dior would likely have always died, in every possible scenario—well, barring the scenarios where the Iathrim prevail over those barely-Edhil, mostly-Orcs who fell upon them with fire and murder. In the fantastical scenarios where the Iathrim prevailed over their enemies, and all seven sons of Fëanor are mercifully, rightfully, _wonderfully_ dead, it would make sense for Dior to win the day and survive to see the next, all his family who were living before the Kinslayers arrived still living after they are left out for the crows to feast upon.

But that rosy tale of victory over the wicked and the vile among their people is not very _likely_ , now is it? No, it is not likely at all, and at any rate, it’s not what happened. The Iathrim did not prevail over the vile among their people, those among them who claim to be superior on account of their having bathed in the light of dead things, and yet are capable of giving nothing to the world but yet more death, and it is not a fantasy that Elwing should indulge in. It is not, is not, is not, _is not_.

So. We must instead deal with the scenario as it is: the Kinslayers won the day, and the Iathrim must flee Doriath to avoid any future attacks from them. Who escapes, in such circumstances?

Dior? Likely not. The king must fight to the death to defend his people, and in this case, whatever else the Kinslayers might be, they are all of them mighty and fearsome warriors, and warriors with far more experience of battle than the young and green king of Doriath.

Nimloth? That is a more interesting question. Some, or perhaps many, would say that thematically-speaking, it makes more sense for her to die. Nimloth was the student of Melian the Queen, the _first_ queen of Doriath, and after Melian departed from Ennor, Nimloth became the beating heart of Menegroth. When she lived, it lived. When she died, it became cold stone, lifeless stone, and it could sustain life no more. (There is another reason neither Thranduil nor Elwing must ever return to Menegroth, no matter the thoughts they might harbor on the subject. Mother is dead, and Menegroth has died with her. Menegroth is dead, and is no longer a place that can support life as it once did. We must not ever become the maggots crawling around in a great stone corpse. We must never become that.)

There are many who would argue that it makes more sense for Nimloth to be dead, from a thematic perspective. If the city is dead, its heart must be dead as well. But Nimloth was not bound to the earth of Menegroth in such a way as to make leaving it impossible. Nimloth could well have become the beating heart of wherever it was she chose to dwell, if she survived the murder of Menegroth. Nimloth could instead be the beating heart of the Lisgardh, even now. You could instead weave a theme of how the heart is eternal, of how the heart of the Iathrim cannot be killed, no matter what might assail it. That is a theme that would no doubt be satisfying to those who consume a tale such as this one, however unlikely it might seem.

Whichever one of Elwing’s brothers is the elder (no one has yet been able to provide her with an answer that satisfies, and it would mortify Elwing to have to ask Duileth whenever it is that she choose to return to the Lisgardh— _Duileth_ surely must know, but she can all too easily imagine what Duileth would think of the fact that Elwing does not know which of her brothers was the elder, when her brothers were, like her, of the line of Elu Thingol, her uncle) could be the one who survived, and the line of Elu Thingol would live on through the firstborn son. Whichever one of Elwing’s brothers is the younger could be the one who survived, and it would become a tale of the unlikely new king of the Iathrim, the second son who was never expected to be king over anything or anyone, and yet ruled with justice and with mercy.

Or, it could be Elwing.

It could be Elwing.

But who wants to read a story like _that_?

Who wants to read a story about the little girl, too small and too weak for her family line, the little girl who is utterly unequal to the task of being the kind of ruler her father and her great-grandfather were, the little girl who can only struggle and writhe in the wet sand beneath her to find the strength to perform even in the most mediocre fashion, who wants to read a story about a girl like _that_ becoming queen? Who wants to read a story about a girl like that being the survivor of the family, and the _only_ survivor, at that?

Elwing would never have credited it. She would never have credited it as a convincing narrative, were it not the narrative she is living through, herself. She still has a hard time crediting it, regardless.

She is the least-likely member of the family, excepting her father (and when we take into account the rosier narratives that could have been constructed of that final day, Dior can no longer be excepted at all) to have survived this long. She is the least-likely member of her family to be the one who remains, the one who rules over the remnant of their people. She doubts ever that she is the one her people would have chosen, had _they_ had the choice to decide which one of the family would survive to rule over them. Surely either of her parents would have been considered most preferable—the king best of all, but the queen who had been around for as long as Ithil and Anor have endured, or longer, and who had much experience of the people she would have been called upon to rule (And Nimloth might not have had the _strongest_ claim, but she, too, was of the House of Thingol, and coming into it already as queen consort would have made her claim considerably stronger). And if it had to be one of the children, surely either one of Elwing’s brothers would have been preferred. Surely one of the boys, and older than her at that, would have been preferred, rather than this small, feeble girl who had to be raised up completely in a place completely alien to her rightful home.

She’s the least-likely member of the family to have made it this far. She doubts she’s the one anyone would have chosen, if they had the choice of who to rule over them out here in the Lisgardh. She knows also that Eärendil would choose the Sea if he was free to choose, and thus, Elwing knows what she needs to do.

This is the home they have, as it is now. Decrepit little mud-brick houses that could be destroyed even by an especially strong storm, let _alone_ the fires the Enemy could let loose across all of Beleriand at any time. (The northern horizon is starting to look a little orange even in the daytime. Elwing does not want to think about it. She does not want to look north. She finds herself looking north whenever her concentration slips, whenever she forgets the reasons why she should not look.) Their only shelter from all their enemies is a dense sea of reeds tall enough to hide the low roofs of their houses, and that… Well, that is no defense at all. And the proximity of the Sea only aids them when it comes to the Enemy and his creatures. Vile as they are, the Kinslayers are not daunted by the Sea in the same way.

They deserve better than this. She claws at the song, hissing between clenched teeth, willing it to bend to her purposes. They all deserve better than this. She deserves better than this, deserves better than the hunger ever gnawing in the pit of her stomach, deserves better than the scrawny, malnourished body that is hers even into adulthood, deserves better than to have grown up without any member of her family, this world is not fair and it cares nothing for what she _deserves_ , if it cared even a whit she would not be here, she would be back at home with those who loved her, but she has just a little power, and even if that power is feeble and barely-there, it is something she can _use…_

Elwing sets her will against the Silmaril, and her eyes are flooded with light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Use of an in-universe pejorative; self-loathing; poor self-esteem; obsession; food insecurity and certain oblique disordered thoughts surrounding food; bigotry against the Dwarves]

Later, so much later, there will be whispers of life in the camp in the Lisgardh after Elwing ‘mastered’ the Silmaril, and later, those whispers will turn into full-blown tales, swirling and distorting and metastasizing until they can no longer all be herded in and contained and controlled, until they can no longer be silenced when they cease to in any way reflect reality.

Those whispers, those tales, they will speak of the wonders Elwing has wrought with the Silmaril. They will speak of how fair a place the camp has become, how beautiful it is, the fairest dwelling of the Eldar left in Beleriand. They will all speak of the camp’s fair _appearance_. They will not speak of how that fairness persists only in days, and only in nights when the night sky is not painted a livid, eerie, terrifying red (So, most nights, really). They will not speak of how that fairness persists only as long as Elwing wears the Silmaril around her neck. They will not speak of how that fairness persists only as long as Elwing is in her place in the Lisgardh. They will not speak of how the light in the eyes of the Edhil who dwell in this place changes with each month that passes in which this fairness persists, will not speak of how the Edain’s numbers begin to dwindle with increasing speed, the longer this fairness persists. They will not speak of how the Edain seem almost to burn themselves out, and will not speak of what becomes of the few who remain, will not speak of why no tales of them persist after their demise.

Elwing will never know just what to think or feel about these tales. She somehow managed to avoid hearing of them when she was living in the Lisgardh herself, and they will only come to her much, much later, when she is so far removed from that sort of life that there are times when it all seems like a tormenting dream, with all the unreality and strangeness of a dream. She will never know just what it is she ought to feel.

But she does remember what she wrought. She remembers it. She does not know what about it was deemed worth memorializing in such tales, let alone tales that make it all seem so much more wonderful than it really was. Most likely, it is because that fairness she wrought, as surface-only as it might have been, was what would eventually lead to their destruction. That must be it.

For all her days, Elwing will remember it. Her mind is not kind enough to ever let her forget.

-

But she does set her power to the Silmaril, you know. She sets her power to the Silmaril, and at last, she finds some part of it that will bend to her will and let her do with it as she will, and though she cannot do _all_ that her grandmother might have done in her positions, there is something, something, _something_ she can do.

What she’s doing, she will think later, self-deprecating and burning with derision and despair and the bitterness of every last thing she has ever done come to nothing, is putting a fresh coat of paint over a frame terribly rotten. When she is done, everything looks fair. Everything looks fair, until she removes the Silmaril from her neck, or sometimes, at the beginning, when her concentration slips (but it is not so forever, only that way for the first few months, and then she can exert her will over the Silmaril even when she does not actively devote her will to it, once the Silmaril’s song is deep within her mind and it never, ever, _ever_ truly leaves her behind) and she can no longer hear the song of the Silmaril reverberating in her ears. Everything looks fair, until suddenly it doesn’t anymore, the fragile illusion torn apart like paper in uncaring hands. Everything looks fair, until suddenly it doesn’t anymore, until suddenly it all looks exactly as it did before Elwing took up the Silmaril and found a strain of its power that she could harness.

It is indeed like giving a fresh coat of paint to something terribly rotten. Beneath, the rot is still there, waiting for the paint to flake away and reveal what sits beneath to the light once more. The rot is still there underneath. The deprivation and privation is still there, underneath. Nothing material has changed. But it all _looks_ better. It all looks like something just a hair closer to the lives they led in the ghostly ruins of their lost kingdoms, when those lost kingdoms were yet whole and living.

It all _looks_ better, and that is all. It _looks_ better. It is _not_ better. Beneath the fresh coat of paint, the rot persists. They are still hungry. Elwing is still hungry. The Silmaril puts such a fresh, fair sheen on everything, but it isn’t enough to weave her a vision of her body as it would look if well-fed, not in any way that approaches the real thing. Elwing does not need to learn not to put that illusion on herself; she knows well enough what it would do to her to let the illusion slip.

But it does look better. Sometimes Elwing hates that she can do nothing except make things _look_ better, hates that she can give only the fresh coat of paint and can never do anything with the Silmaril that would make things materially better. Sometimes, _sometimes_ , making things look better, making this camp look a little more like civilization, is almost enough for her. Sometimes, it is almost enough just to make the camp look a little more homely, to make it look a little more like a place where people would actually choose to live, rather than a place where people are clearly only living because they have no better options than this.

It’s not enough for Eärendil, though. It’s not enough to keep him here. Not forever. Sometimes, Elwing wonders if anything ever would be, if she is not enough by herself.

Whatever that something might have been, if such a thing even exists, it is not Elwing. It is not Elwing, and it is not within her grasp, and thus, she might as well quit dwelling on it. It will do her no good.

(She will continue to dwell upon it, regardless. It is difficult for her not to dwell on the things that hurt her, like picking at a scab until the little cut it originated from festers into a great, oozing sore.)

Elwing does not try to protest, when Eärendil comes to her, pale and strained and clearly on the verge of weeping to tell her of his intentions to leave the Lisgardh for a time. She does not try to protest when he tells her that the ship is ready, and all that is left remaining is for him to take to it. She does not try to protest when he tells her of his intended _reason_ for the voyage, however mad it might be. She does not try to protest, does not try to tell him that if the Rodyn have not heeded their pleas before now, she does not see why they would start. She does not try to protest, does not try to tell him that he is the son of an Exile and an Adan, that he is doubly banned from the Undying Lands and that even if by some chance he managed to find his way to those distant shores, the Rodyn would not greet him gladly, the Rodyn would only be interested in bringing about his death. He has already made up his mind. There is nothing she can say. Her words would be as meaningful as the low howling of the wind that ever races above the roof of their little house, out here so far away from the ruins of their lost kingdoms.

There is nothing she can say, and thus, Elwing makes no attempt to protest. She makes no attempt to weave the nameless emotions clawing at her heart into anything comprehensible to anything that is not her, makes no attempt to articulate them into speech.

There is nothing she can say, and thus, Elwing makes no attempt to protest. Even when she thinks that Eärendil is _waiting_ for her protests to fill the salt air with their clamor, even when she thinks he _wants_ her protests, she remains silent. She could not spin them into something resembling speech so quickly, if she even could at all, and she just… she doesn’t see what the point is. If he’s going to leave regardless of what she says to him, why should she bother? Why should she beat against the uncaring, unfeeling wind with words that can make no difference? She is a queen, and she must have _some_ dignity. She is a queen, and Eärendil is not one of her subjects. She cannot dictate where he does and does not go. There is no point to try.

(There are some who would argue that, as Eärendil’s _wife_ , she has some claim—indeed, more than just ‘some’ claim—to where he does and does not go. There are some who would argue, and some who, in the future, _will_ argue that Elwing had and has a right to expect that Eärendil would put aside any longing for the Sea or what lies beyond it to stay by her side. They do not understand. They do not understand what it is to feel such desires, to feel desires larger than their own bodies, to feel desires that can so easily overpower every other impulse in their body. They do not understand what it is to be ruled by these desires. Elwing does wish for… She does wish that things were otherwise. Truly, she does. But she cannot expect them to be otherwise. This is what they have, this is what they were given and set with, and this is what they must contend with. They have no choice.)

So. All of Elwing’s hard work has had some sort of result. It has not been the result she would have wished for, not the result she could perhaps have _expected,_ had she possessed the power her grandmother possessed, had the uncanny within her been _truly_ uncanny, but it is some sort of result. It is a result that was not enough to keep her husband at her side, was not enough to keep her from this point, of standing on the seashore and watching a ship sail off into the west at daybreak.

Elwing stands on the shore with her feet sinking into the sand, the water welling up out of the earth to puddle around her feet like tears, though no tears fall from her face. No tears fall from her face, and the Sea seems to think something amiss about that, for it wells up and splashes hard against her body with each roll of the waves, splattering her face with brine. She says nothing, neither to the Sea nor to the Edhil who have gathered out on the shore with her. She says nothing, and makes no move to walk away, not until she has had her last glimpse of white sails, and the ship disappears over the horizon. She wonders, briefly, if Eärendil can still see the shine of the Silmaril at her throat from over that horizon. Surely, he must. Surely, he will think of it—and her—when he thinks of home. She wants to be thought of. If she can have nothing else, she wants to be thought of.

Elwing stands out on the shore for a long time, long after everyone but those who act as her guards has disappeared back up into the reeds. The solitude is… rare. It’s rare, these days, and Elwing thinks it’s going to become rarer still within the year, though at this point, she cannot be certain—and she may be mistaken on that point, anyways. She is most likely mistaken on that point. She was not certain enough of it to bring it up before Eärendil left. She had no desire to see if _this,_ of all things, would be enough to stay his hand and stay his wandering feet and wandering mind and wandering soul, and keep him here in the Lisgardh. Elwing did not know which outcome would have upset her more, for though everyone would assume the idea of his setting off anyways would be the most upsetting possible of the potential outcomes, Elwing can see how the alternative might lead them to no better outcome. She can see, quite easily, how it could poison the affection between them, between what… what has arisen of their affection, and them. What use is having Eärendil here with her, if he cannot even bear to look at her, for thought of what he has given up to remain here, by her side?

Elwing stands out on the shore for a long time, long after she’s had her last glimpse of the ship’s sails and she has nothing left to look at but the Sea, and the distant shadow of the Isle of Balar off to the northwest. All around her, there are different stimuli to tease the ears. At her feet there is the earth, humming its low, almost grating melody. The Sea beckons, and about her, so does the air, whispering to her with a voice unlike any Elwing has heard before. But all of them pale to what the Silmaril can set into her flesh. All of this pales compared to the song of the Silmaril. The earth and the Sea and the air are not mutable the way the Silmaril is, at least when Elwing sets her will to its song. They cannot give her the comfort that something she can actually _influence_ can. They cannot give her any comfort at all.

Poor comfort it might be, but she will grasp it with both hands. At last, Elwing sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, and tears her gaze away from the Sea. The Sea will not give her what she wants. She is not certain that there is _anything_ that can give her what she wants, when what she wants flies so far above the grasp of her outstretched fingers. But if she wants to get even a hairsbreadth closer to it, she must work at it herself. She turns on her heel, and begins to make her way towards the camp. The day is yet young, and she has work to do.

-

The months that wear on confirm what Elwing suspected of her own body, though she had not been certain enough of it when Eärendil was last here to tell him of it herself. Her belly swells and her body changes and she feels so, _so_ sick, and only part of that is due to the changes being wrought in her flesh.

_What sort of world to bring children into…_

Everyone thinks only to congratulate her, or else lament the fact that the child’s father will not be present for the birth, for no one knows where Eärendil is and the weather is turning, and the waters will soon become unsafe to navigate for even a mariner of Eärendil’s immense skill. In such a situation as this, everyone around her thinks only of congratulating her. As if this is something to be happy about.

_What a world to continue this line in…_

They had not planned for this, you know. They have been married for some time at this point, but they were not planning for this. They had not discussed it, not even once. They’re both still young, and even if they bear the bodies of adult Edhil, Elwing had not been entirely certain that she _could_ conceive at all. A child of the Edhil whose only blood _is_ that of the Edhil would, at her age, still be a child, and a child young enough that there would be no question of being able to conceive a child of her own. That Elwing can…

The blood of the Ainur is strange, and gives strange gifts and inheritances. Elwing feels no kinship to the Edain, regardless of Beren’s blood in her veins. She feels no kinship to the Edain, and cannot imagine that _this,_ of all things, would be what rules the day in terms of why her case should differ from other women of the Edhil. The blood of the Ainur is strange, and though it might be diluted, it yet flows through her veins. That must be what accounts for this. It must be.

_What sort of world to bring a child into, when I cannot know the whole truth of my own body, when I cannot answer the questions they might have, if they have these strange gifts as well, especially not if they manifest in different ways._

_I can’t…_

It does not matter what she can or cannot do. It never has, and it never will. What matters is what task she has been set with, and what she must do to fulfill it.

If she can.

On this day, Elwing is thinking somewhat less of what she can and cannot do. Duileth has fulfilled the promise she made on Elwing’s wedding day, however little she might have cared to be roped into making that promise in the first place. Duileth has fulfilled that promise, and returned to the Lisgardh, to tell her more of the construction of Menegroth. Duileth had even restrained any comments on Elwing’s current state to a reticent congratulations. Some might have taken it as some sort of insult—Elwing was convinced that there were those who _had_ taken it as an insult—but she was grateful for it. She had been peppered with questions so many times now that she was grateful for someone who would merely raise their eyebrows a little and then murmur congratulations, before launching into the actual reason for their visit.

“The construction of Menegroth,” Duileth begins, as the other visitors begin slowly to file out of Elwing’s home—some seem interested in this story, but most seem only a little perturbed at the likelihood that it will be a long time yet before _their_ voices are heard, their stories heard, their judgment received, “is something all the tales seem to think took place over the course of a single night. Not a single one of them ever goes into the travails that accompanied its long construction. Indeed, none of them even go into the _length_ of its construction. And certainly—“ here, a sharp gleam enters into her eyes, something like irritation, though not directed at Elwing (she had thought for a moment that it might be) “—none of them speak of those who had a hand in its construction, besides Elu Thingol and the Naugrim craftsmen he employed.”

This, Elwing takes it, is her cue. She nods her head to Duileth, who has sat down at the chair opposite her at her little table—not really a council table, it cannot _ever_ be considered a council table, considering how poor it is, but it will have to do, at times like these. “If there is anything you would wish to say to clear up my misapprehensions, I would be happy to hear it.”

Duileth smiles thinly, a cool, gentle smile like winter giving way to spring—a promise, perhaps, of greater warmth, but in days when the Enemy has free rein to make summers as cold as he pleases, who knows? “It will be a tale some time in the telling. If you have any pressing appointments, I would suggest you pick a different time.”

“There are none.” And that is true. Everyone knew that Duileth was coming, this time—she had sent a messenger to notify them, and Elwing had rearranged her schedule accordingly. Her next appointment is in roughly three hours. If Duileth is still talking at that time, she does not doubt that the person she is meeting with would be willing to reschedule their appointment to the following day. And she does not think that Duileth will carry on for quite that long. However long and interesting the tale might be, it must be something that most of its tellers would prefer to condense to something a bit shorter than that.

At this, Duileth nods her head to Elwing, her smile widening slightly. Elwing wonders suddenly just how long it has been since she last had the opportunity to tell this story to anyone. Most of the Iathrim who went to Balar were born well before the sack, and would likely have known at least part of the story. This is a story that might well have been told many times in the ruins of Menegroth, though apparently not at the high tables where all could hear. But perhaps there is a comfort in recounting such things, after the works of your hands which you are recounting have been destroyed beyond recall. Perhaps. Elwing does not know that it would comfort her, in Duileth’s place. But she is not Duileth, and Duileth does not seem to be thinking of what will or will not comfort her, as she launches into her tale.

Menegroth was fashioned long ago, so long ago that by the time Ithil first appeared on the horizon to bring light to a sky previously lit up only by stars, the city was old and venerable, had seen several generations of Edhil be born within its embrace. Once upon a time, Menegroth was the safest and the fairest city in all of Beleriand—all of Ennor, perhaps, for who knows where the Edhil who did not make it this far west ended up, and what sorts of settlements they made for themselves, and Men cannot possibly be relied upon to make settlements that are actually worth _remembering_ about, not without the heavy influence of the Edhil upon them. Once upon a time, though no more. No more, but once, oh, once.

Elwing endures Duileth’s reminiscences upon how fair, how lovely and beloved Menegroth was in silence. She slips her hands under the table to hide how she has curled them both into fists, and hopes that she can keep her jaw from too obviously clenching. It would not do to interrupt the tale, not by provoking Duileth into commenting on her altered demeanor. It would not do for word to spread. (Why is it that she must always be surrounded by tales of what she can never have?)

Eventually, Elwing’s endurance pays off, for Duileth’s tale shifts from these reminiscences (oh, how often she has heard these particular tales, and oh, how they still cut just as keenly as they did the first time it really sank in for her just what it was she can never have, and just how what she does have compares to it) to what came _before_ such memories were even possible. For Menegroth was an old, venerable city by the time it had fallen, but it had not been around for as long as the earth beneath their feet has been around. As difficult as it is for many of the Iathrim to believe, there was a time before Menegroth existed at all. There was a time when the Iathrim dwelled in the woods surrounding where the city would later be located, when they dwelled by the shores of the Esgalduin and had no idea what sort of beauty ad security could be found in living in caves deep under the surface of the earth. We must drift back to _those_ times, in order to understand just how the city was constructed.

Long before the Naugrim proved so treacherous as to murder Thingol in his own home, the Iathrim and the Naugrim were, if not truly _friends_ , than at least able to exist with each other in amiability. And before that almost-friendship developed, these peoples were as strangers to one another, and introductions were in order. It came out of battles and travelers, enterprising Naugrim craftsmen and merchants journeying around Beleriand, seeking their kin wherever else they might dwell, aside from their mountains, and warriors carrying out reprisals against Orcs who thought that they could molest traveling bands of Naugrim merchants and craftsmen without consequences. It was in this fashion that the Naugrim first became aware of the Iathrim, for the warriors of both of these peoples would happen upon each other during their battles with the Orcs and the other foul things that spewed from the old fortresses in the furthest north. It was in this fashion that these two peoples first began speaking to one another, and though the tales might distort these facts in the future, this is all as Duileth, who was witness to it from the very start, remembers.

It was hard going, at first. Sindarin and the language of the Naugrim are two tongues far removed from one another, and the Naugrim are exceptionally secretive about their language, to boot. Even with the facility of the Edhil for languages, it was many years before these two peoples could properly understand each other, many years before they were no longer obliged to communicate through hand gestures and figures scratched into the dirt. In those years, there were many misunderstandings that nearly led to conflict— _unpleasant_ conflict, at that—and given that Duileth would not be specific on exactly what those conflicts were or who had fomented them, Elwing could guess that not all of them have been instigated by their own people. That… It was a more pleasant narrative, Elwing supposed, to think that signs of the Naugrim’s later treachery had been obvious from the start, but she supposed things could not have ever been that simple.

In time, though, the Naugrim, who were, along with everything _else_ they were, possessed of no small facility with languages themselves, learned Sindarin well enough to converse in the language, though Sindarin as they spoke it forever had some loanwords that were at best difficult for the Iathrim to parse. Regardless of those loanwords, the Naugrim learned Sindarin well enough to speak it to those who had been speaking Sindarin all this time, and thus, discourse between the two peoples was now possible.

They traded, these two peoples. Each had resources that the other wanted, and thus, their relationship _truly_ began. There would never be the sort of friendship between the Iathrim and the Naugrim as what the Exiles and the Naugrim enjoyed (and here, Duileth paused for a muttered aside for how we should have perhaps taken that as a clue to the Exiles’ true character, though Elwing did not think it could account for those born in Beleriand, who held the Naugrim as friends), but it was something.

At length, it became known that the Naugrim lived in vast, effectively unassailable mansions, carved deep into the Ered Luin. There were those among the Iathrim who would mourn the loss of the sky and the stars, were they forced to take on a similar living situation, but there were more still who found the idea of living deep within the embrace of the earth a fascinating one, and all agreed that they had come to long for something grander than their settlement on the banks of the Esgalduin. The Rodyn insisted that for the Edhil, true beauty and peace and rest was only to be found beyond the Sea in those distant Undying Lands, but that way was shut to the Iathrim, and why should they live their lives bereft of these things, simply because of what sort of earth their feet tread upon?

At any rate, the decision was ultimately Thingol and Melian’s, and once Melian proclaimed her disinterest in the outcome of the matter, solely Thingol’s. Thingol pondered on this matter a long time. He, too, would miss the sky and the trees and the stars if he was forced to quit their presence. Yes, he could still come to the surface to be among them when his heart wished it so, but it would not be the same. There was the matter also of his brother—not the youngest, who by this time was long dead to an ambush by Orcs, but the other, who had led a good number of the Lindar west over the Sea, into those lands unknown and out of reach. Thingol liked to breathe in the breeze that rolled in from the west, and think of him. There would be no opportunity for such, below the surface of the earth.

But he was not insensible to those same impulses which others among his people had felt. The Edhil might have been children of the stars, first and foremost, but they were of the earth as well, and there was a strange comfort to be found in the idea of living forever in the earth’s close, protective embrace. And Thingol alone of the Iathrim _had_ seen the wonders of the Undying Lands, had seen how great and how glorious life could be. Thingol failed to understand why the Rodyn would behave as if great and glorious things were for the Undying Lands, only. Ennor was constructed of the same materials, and most certainly was capable of being put to the same use. And Thingol longed for a kingdom worthy of his people, halls worthy of their songs. Caves, it was to be.

They already had the perfect backdrop, for Menegroth once existed as a bed of rock and boulder in the earth, immeasurably vast. The stone was ideal for the delving of caves; it just required the right craftsmen to delve them. And in those days, there were only one set of craftsmen known to the Iathrim who could have done the dream justice.

Thingol could not negotiate himself. He believed that a king should never remove himself from his own seat of power, and besides, it would have been far beneath his dignity to go to the halls of the Naugrim as something even remotely resembling a supplicant. A king should never put himself in a position where it is possible to mistake him for a supplicant, especially not before such strange, misshapen people who speak such a harsh, unlovely tongue. But neither could the negotiator be someone of no status among the Iathrim, for common sense dictated that such would only offend the Naugrim, and make them less inclined to extend their services to those who now desired them.

Duileth was chosen. She was the eldest of Thingol’s kin who both drew breath, and drew it on this side of the Sea, and was willing to part from the starlit woods by the Esgalduin. There was no better choice for a negotiator, at least not in those days. (There was one other, one who had apparently had some experience of the Naugrim in the past, but he could not be prevailed upon to quit his more remote dwelling within the deepest of the woods.) Duileth pulls a face and mutters of how, in retrospect, she would have preferred never to set foot into the buzzing hive of what had proven to be such vile and treacherous enemies, but Elwing nods at her to proceed, just a touch impatiently, and thus she does, though her mouth quirks in such a way as to immediately signal to Elwing that Duileth has perceived her impatience.

So be it. It’s too late to keep herself from becoming impatient. Duileth had promised her this tale, and she’d said nothing of making these detours. It’s only fair, is it not?

It might be fair, but that does not change the fact that Elwing can potentially be judged and found wanting. That does not change the fact that Duileth can carry tales away.

Well, as to _that_ , Elwing supposes she can go to Thranduil and try and finally have the tale out of him, of just why it was that his parents had not chosen to remain in the Lisgardh. She has a feeling that Thranduil might be just a touch more receptive to it, if she asks him now—ever since she announced that she is with child, his response has been like it was his own sister who is set to give birth within just a few months’ time. She has a feeling that, if she tried hard enough, if she employed enough subtlety, she could wheedle the tale out of him. Actually, she might not even need to try too hard, or employ too much in the way of subtlety. She thinks she might be able to get the story out of him without doing so much as saying more than ‘will you tell me?’

Duileth resumes her tale, running a hand through her thick, silvery hair as she does so. The journey to the Ered Luin was a long one, made longer by the number of times they had to stop to do battle with the Orcs. This, at least, Duileth has never suspected to be the work of the Naugrim, for even as treacherous as they eventually proved themselves to be, the Naugrim have always had just about as much love for the Orcs as have had the Edhil. They exterminate the Orcs wherever they can find their nests, with a sort of zeal that Duileth honestly seems to envy, though she has never rightly been able to determine just where this zeal comes from. There must be a story in it, but it is not a story the Naugrim have ever been willing to share.

At any rate, the journey to the Ered Luin was a long one, made longer by the necessity of stopping to do battle with and exterminate the bands of Orcs that spilled out of the north like angry grave worms. By the time Duileth reached the doors of these great mansions, she was so weary from the long journey that she would gladly have slept in one of the Naugrim’s coal piles, if only that coal pile was behind sturdy walls, and protected from the elements. (Here, Elwing suspects that she is exaggerating, but she allows it—it demonstrates plainly enough her feelings regarding the journey, and her relief to have it done with.)

Duileth was not made to sleep on a coal pile—guests were treated with greater courtesy, in those days. She was ushered not to Nogrod, where the most wicked and vile of the Naugrim would eventually spew forth, but to neighboring Belegost, where it was claimed there lived the greatest delvers of caves in all the world. Letters had been sent ahead, after all, and the lord of Belegost had been expecting an emissary for some time, now.

The Naugrim… Hmm, the Naugrim take the delving of caves very seriously. So do the Edhil, of course, for it is important to delve a cave _properly_ if you wish to be able to live in it safely. You do not ever want to do something that could risk having the whole mountain falling down on top of you, not if you can avoid it at all. And why not fashion your cave home to be something that is actually pleasant to live in, if it is at all in your power to do so?

The Edhil take the delving of caves seriously, but the Naugrim take the delving seriously in a way totally unlike that of the Edhil. They claim to be the children of Belegol, fashioned by him after he saw the One fashioning Edhil and Men and wished for children of his own. That, Duileth claims, she can well believe, for she does not think that the _One_ would ever fashion such misshapen things to dwell on the surface of the earth—but again, this is a digression, and again, Elwing is nodding for her to proceed, and leave the digression behind.

The Naugrim did, or perhaps still do, take the delving of caves more seriously than even the most dedicated delvers of the Edhil. They proclaim themselves the children of Belegol, whose mansions are lit deep within the mountains of the Undying Lands. Every hall ever carved by a craftsman of the Naugrim can potentially be taken as a reflection upon Belegol, and thus, it must all be done with the utmost care and dedication. Duileth claims in the next breath that she never spoke to any of the Naugrim overlong regarding the exact reasons for their sheer dedication to this craft, and that everyone knows that Belegol dwells under the open sky with Ivon his wife, so Elwing cannot be sure what is the truth and what is Duileth pretending her heart was never once something other than what it is now, but she will dwell upon that later, if she cares to.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact is that the Naugrim in those days were both highly experienced of delving caves that could more rightly be called cities, and that they were dedicated enough to performing this craft and performing it _well_ that they could be trusted not to botch the job. This knowledge in mind, Duileth and her escort passed through the doors of Belegost, into the city within the embrace of the mountain.

It was beautiful. _Strange_ , Duileth hastened to add, but Elwing does not think she mistook the way Duileth’s eyes glazed over in reminiscence upon the word ‘beautiful.’ It was beautiful beyond compare, of all else that Duileth had yet seen, and though Duileth might not say so outright to Elwing’s face, Elwing can guess as much from the way Duileth dances around it all so.

‘Wonderful-‘ or ‘beautiful, but strange,’ becomes a common refrain as Duileth’s tale wears on. Her guest chambers were lavishly furnished, beyond anything she had known by the shores of the Esgalduin, or the wandering that preceded it. The bed was of a style that would become popular among the Iathrim practically the moment Menegroth was full-wrought, but was as of yet unknown to the Iathrim, in their modest dwellings on the riverbank: a raised frame, intricately carved, and adorned with a thick, soft mattress full of down. The pillows and pelts that lied overtop the mattress itself was more familiar to Duileth, but here she tells Elwing, unabashed, that sleeping on that mattress was unlike any sleep she had ever before experienced. The bed was long enough to fit Duileth, a fact that has forever made her think that it was made for her specifically, and sleeping in that wondrously soft bed, behind sturdy chamber doors to which she had been given the only key, deep within the embrace of the earth, she experienced a kind of security in sleep she had never before felt, and has not felt for a single night since she was forced to leave Menegroth behind her.

The food, Duileth starts, and Elwing frowns, seriously considering the merits of stopping her there, and bidding her move on to the negotiations themselves. Duileth’s eyes have taken on the same gleam her son’s acquire when he speaks of the feasts at the royal table in Menegroth, and she does not, she _cannot_ —

She has waited too long, and Duileth has launched straight into her description of the food she was served in the dining halls of Belegost. It is too late, and Elwing does not feel as if she can stem the tide flowing from Duileth’s mouth. She will simply have to endure it.

The food was quite unlike what Duileth had known by the shores of the Esgalduin, or the wandering that preceded it. Much of that was due to the difference in the plants that grow in the Ered Luin, as opposed to the more westerly parts of Beleriand, where Duileth was born. Some of it was due to the fact that the Naugrim of Belegost had little love for fish in comparison to the Edhil, and a much greater love of boar, as opposed to Edhil who, in those days, still shied away from boars as being entirely too dangerous to be hunting. And the Naugrim had much greater knowledge and willingness to use spices than the Edhil did in those days, when the Iathrim had not been settled in a single place for long enough to really begin to think it _safe_ to cook with anything besides salt and garlic, as far as spices were concerned.

So the food was in many cases quite different from what Duileth had previously experienced, and though Duileth seems loath to admit it, she eventually does admit that she enjoyed nearly every meal she ate while dwelling in Belegost. The only things she well and truly did not enjoy were some of the fermented fruits the Naugrim liked, or perhaps still like, to eat heated and spiced during the snowy winter months. They were too strong for Duileth, who though she does much like a good alcoholic brew, prefers something a little sweeter, a little less sour.

She was hosted in the mansions of Belegost for several days before she finally was ushered into the presence of its lord. Here, Duileth remarks sourly on how she suspects some sort of insult, though Elwing has heard enough of the histories of the Edhil to know that the Naugrim might have thought that Duileth, who had traveled a long way to get there, and had spent the latter part of that journey doing so through the snow thanks to all the times they had to stop to do battle with or hide from Orcs, needed a few days to recover before getting into anything too serious. They had clearly underestimated her, this niece of Elu Thingol, and their treacherous kinsmen in Nogrod would learn even better how ill it went to underestimate Duileth, daughter of Elmo, when they met her in battle in Menegroth. They had clearly underestimated her, but though Elwing knows better than to assume that the Naugrim have not been acting out of malice when there is even the slightest hint to point towards malice, in this case, she thinks that malice might not have entered into it at all.

But it is useless to try to convince Duileth to think a little better of such a vile and hated foe, nearly as despised as the Kinslayers, though on a very bad day, they are held in equal disregard. It is useless, and Elwing is not at all inclined to try her luck against something useless today. It wouldn’t fit right on her tongue, anyways.

Once Duileth was brought before the lord of Belegost, the negotiations began in earnest, and the _true_ work began, more laborious by far than fighting off the Orcs had been.

Duileth… Her brow furrows, lips pursing, as she says, in a low, contemplative voice, that she does not think that the Naugrim had any real intention of refusing the Iathrim’s request, not truly. They have great dedication to the craft of delving caves, and great love for it, as well. Delving caves in a manner more alike to the Iathrim’s aesthetic ideals than the Naugrim’s, while still meeting the Naugrim’s exacting standards for what would reflect well upon Belegol, what would be pleasing to Belegol if he was called upon to dwell within the halls delved deep within the earth, it was a challenge that no true craftsman among the Naugrim would not have at least been _interested_ in. There was not such enmity between the Naugrim and the Iathrim then as there is now, so that would not have been able to account for it, either. Duileth thinks it unlikely that the Naugrim would ever have turned the offer down, not unless she as Thingol’s emissary offered them some truly _monumental_ insult.

But that is not to say that the Naugrim wished to appear too eager to take on such an assignment. They have never wished for anyone, the Iathrim in particular, to labor under the impression that the labor of the Naugrim is something that can be sought and obtained so easily as all that. They hold their craft in higher regard than that. They do not wish to think that they can be called upon as easily as someone who was actually employed by the Iathrim on a more permanent basis. They do not wish for outsiders to think that the work of their hands can be so cheaply bought, let alone so easily obtained.

It was thus that Duileth found herself bargaining for the services of the Naugrim in the delving of what would become Menegroth, and became increasingly aware of how unfavorable her negotiating position was. The Naugrim were already a mighty people, while the Iathrim, for all of their fairness and wisdom, were living in humble, modest dwellings by the banks of the Esgalduin, protected more by the machinations of Melian than by their own strength. It was not as if they had nothing to offer in compensation, but soon, Duileth found herself listing off more and more of the treasures of the Iathrim as possible rewards to the craftsmen of Nogrod, as each one of them was found wanting to those who had so much treasure already.

Finally, Duileth touched upon Nimphelos. Nimphelos, a treasure since lost in the tumult that has gripped the Edhil and the Naugrim both. Nimphelos was a pearl of wondrous size and beauty, the largest that has ever been found by the Falathrim on the shores of the Sea, and given how large some of those pearls have been, that truly is saying something. When polished, Nimphelos shone with a sheen and something close to a light, something that could be spotted easily across a large room. Sometimes, there was speculation on whether or not Nimphelos was truly an ordinary pearl. Some have speculated that the jewel might have once been a component of a piece of jewelry belonging to one of the Sea Maiar, and that the magicks of the Maiar might have had some effect upon it, might have made it appear even more wondrous than a pearl of its size would have seemed on its own.

Duileth was loath to bring the pearl up to the lord of Belegost, for she knew her uncle prized it greatly. Thingol prized Nimphelos greatly, and she could not say how well he would take to her committing him to giving up the pearl to the Naugrim, in exchange for their services. But Thingol had indeed given her a list of treasures she was _forbidden_ to bring up as potential compensation, and Nimphelos was conspicuous by its absence from that list. She knew her uncle prized the pearl greatly, but Thingol had never singled the pearl out as something she was not allowed to attempt to bargain with.

Whatever Thingol’s thoughts about having to give up Nimphelos might have been, it seemed that Duileth would be confronted with them soon enough. As she described the pearl to the lord of Belegost, Duileth watched as his eyes lit up in something between fascination and longing. The Naugrim had never been to the Sea—well, the greater part of their people had never been to the Sea. There were some who had come closer to it, and none of them liked it overmuch. The lord of Belegost had _certainly_ never gone as far west as to meet the shores of the Sundering Sea, and he had never in his life laid eyes upon a pearl. He enquired with great, self-evident interest regarding the mechanisms by which a pearl was formed, pressing Duileth for more information until she had told him every last thing she knew about it, down to the grain of sand which irritated the flesh of oysters and clams. From there, he moved on to inquiries about the typical appearance of a pearl, its shape and color and luster, the way it would crack or split if struck with a chisel, the way it shone when a light was shone upon it. The lord of Belegost was plainly curious beyond compare regarding this thing he had never even heard of, let alone laid eyes upon, and would not rest until his curiosity was satisfied.

By the end of it, Duileth was counting herself grateful that she herself had been curious enough to go asking after the mechanisms of a pearl’s creation as well, for had she not known these things, she was certain that the lord of Belegost would have been mightily disappointed, and that this would have damaged her attempts at negotiation. And by the end of it, Duileth had promised him Nimphelos, and a king’s ransom in lesser pearls besides. Nimphelos was reputed to have been highly prized by this lord of Belegost, as well as his heirs for the next several generations. Duileth has no idea what became of the rest of the pearls. Most likely, she says, with a sniff and a sneer like she’s smelled something foul, they were all broken apart by too-curious, too-clumsy, too-careless hands, though judging by the things she just said regarding the lord of Belegost’s sheer curiosity regarding a pearl’s construction, Elwing thinks the breaking apart was likely done by more deliberate hands than all that.

And when Duileth returned home to Doriath, she found that, indeed, her royal uncle was none-too-pleased to hear that she had committed him to giving Nimphelos to another, especially one who lived so far away from Doriath, and could not be prevailed upon to return it to him, if he so desired. (And he did.) But Duileth reminded him that Nimphelos had _not_ been on the list of prohibited bargaining chips, and though this indeed turned out to be an oversight on Thingol’s part, it was not an oversight he had anyone but himself to blame for. So he gave over Nimphelos to the Naugrim of Belegost, along with a king’s ransom in other pearls—and that term was almost literal, in this case.

The work took many years. The Iathrim grew impatient at many junctions, but the Naugrim urged them to be patient, for this was not the work of a day, or a week, or a month, or a year. The rock that would become Menegroth was immeasurably vast, and part of its being sturdy enough to be an ideal location for the delving of caves that could more accurately be termed a city was that the stone would not yield easily even to such skilled hands as those of the Naugrim. And this all must be done with care, must it not? If it’s not done with care, the caves could come down around all of your heads, and you would not care for that, now would you? You would go into the embrace of death complaining to the Lord of the Dead about the shoddy craftsmanship of those who made your home for you, never understanding that your own impatience played just as large of a role in your death.

The work took many years, and in all that time, the Naugrim craftsmen who had been dispatched from Belegost mostly kept to themselves. They did not speak their harsh, unlovely tongue in front of the Iathrim, which suited the Iathrim just fine, for they did not care to listen to it. Instead, the Naugrim’s mastery of Sindarin grew to such heights that any child of the Edhil could easily have believed that the Naugrim craftsmen had been taught Sindarin from their cradles, though of course they knew that to be impossible. No great friendship ever bloomed between the Naugrim and the vast majority of the Iathrim. Some among the Iathrim did take a liking to those who were currently delving what was to be their new city, but most of those proved later to be of, at best, dubious character, and perhaps, Duileth muses, that is not so surprising. Like attracts like.

No great friendship ever bloomed between the Naugrim and the Iathrim as a whole, but Thingol found much to respect in the diligence and the skill of the craftsmen, and he held for some time a correspondence with the lord of Belegost at the time, so that as time wore on, he no longer regretted the loss of Nimphelos quite as acutely as he used to.

“Menegroth was not built in a day,” Duileth says in conclusion, shrugging her shoulders, though there is something dark, something heavy, yet clinging to those shoulders. It has no tangible weight or presence, and yet, Elwing can see it, slithering around her neck and her shoulders, never once loosening its grip enough to fall away. “Menegroth was not built in a day, and even after it was delved to the point that the Naugrim saw fit to leave our woods behind them and return to their mountains, it was many years yet before we could call it a truly fair place. Our effort was required to make it fair. Melian made it alive, of course, but it took all of us to make it fair.”

Without waiting to be bid to do so, Duileth stands up from the table. She has sense enough not to loom over Elwing, who would have been forced to crane her neck to look into Duileth’s face from close up, even if both of them were standing, and who would find the effect only intensified if Duileth stood so close by her while Elwing yet sat in her chair. Duileth backs a few feet away from the table, so that Elwing still has to crane her neck a little to look up into her face, but not enough to do any damage to what little dignity might be hers, in the eyes of this long-lived princess of the Iathrim. She looks up into Duileth’s face, and waits in silence for Duileth to speak.

Duileth links her arms behind her back as Elwing’s silence drags on. It would seem that Duileth expects _Elwing_ to break that silence, but Elwing has no intention of doing such. Duileth came here to tell a tale, and surely Duileth must expect to do most of the talking on such an occasion as this. Surely, Duileth does not expect to be begged to stay, or even to go on past the bounds of her tale. Not when she has, for all that she is such an important lord of the Iathrim, never taken much of a role in the governance of the Lisgardh. Not when she, for all that she is such an important lord of the Iathrim, has never taken on any significant role in guiding Elwing in her attempts to rule over their people.

At last, Duileth seems to recognize what is already so clear to Elwing. She nods her head, never removing her arms from where she has latched them behind her back. “It was a monumental effort to bring our city to the beauty it enjoyed, ere it fell,” she admits plainly. “I wonder if we will ever have the strength for such again.”

And then, she is gone, disappearing out the door in a brief blaze of sunlight, swallowed quickly up when the door is shut once more. Duileth is gone, leaving Elwing alone with her thoughts—the sweet, and the bitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Belegol** —Aulë  
>  **Ivon** —Yavanna
> 
>  **Adan** —a member of one of the Three Houses of the Edain (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (plural: Edain) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Ered Luin** —“The Blue Mountains” (Sindarin); the mountain range at the far western border of Eriador, that in the Years of the Trees and the First Age served as the border between Eriador and Beleriand. It was also known as the Ered Lindon, the Mountains of the Land of the Singers, Lindon being a name given to the region of the Ossiriand by the Ñoldor, derived from the Nandorin Lindānā.  
>  **Falathrim** —‘People of the foaming shore’ (Sindarin) or ‘Coast people’ (Sindarin); the Sindar of the Havens of the Falas in Beleriand; Círdan’s people.  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lindar** —‘Singers’; the clan name the Nelyar gave themselves (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. The Lindar (later known to outsiders as the Teleri) split into several groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Naugrim** —‘The Stunted People’ (Sindarin); a term used by the Sindar amongst themselves for the Dwarves; given its meaning and that they apparently didn’t use the name in front of the Dwarves, the term is likely a pejorative.  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Poor self-esteem; trauma]

She does not have the sort of strength that steeled the spines of Dior and Nimloth, Lúthien and Beren, Thingol and Melian. Elwing cannot fool herself into believing that she will ever have that sort of strength. Perhaps if she was a princess in Doriath, rather than a queen in the Lisgardh, but Elwing cannot fool herself regarding _that_ scenario, either. Perhaps she could have had that sort of strength, if she had her family to shore her up, but what seems more likely is that she would always have been something of the sort she is now: something that does not have even one-tenth the strength of those who have gone before her.

Elwing does not have the sort of strength that was enjoyed by those who went before her, but their strength was so exceptional that perhaps that is not so damning a statement as all that. (Or so she tries to tell herself, when she is feeling very charitable towards herself. It will not last, she knows. It will not last forever, but it is nice, while it lasts.) She does not have that sort of strength, but there is _some_ sort of strength within her body. Without so much as an ounce of strength, she thinks that she would take to her bed and never leave it again. Without so much as an ounce of strength, she thinks she would just be dead. She thinks that her hunger would have consumed her completely, and left nothing but a shell of wizened flesh that could do nothing but rot and sink into the earth. She thinks so many different things, and so very few of them are fit to be related to any who might one day be privy to her thoughts.

There is some sort of strength in her body, something that has enabled her to survive this sort of world she lives in. There is some sort of strength in Elwing’s body, and she will make what use of it she can. Perhaps it is the sort of strength that allows people to tread on, allows people to drudge on in the face of that which might make others crumple to the ground and let the earth reclaim the materials of their bodies for its own use. Perhaps it is that sort of strength. Elwing hopes so. That sounds very much like the sort of strength she shall need.

Menegroth was not built in a day, and even after it was full-wrought, it was many years before it was anything that could be called _fair_. It was many, many years before the Iathrim could live the peaceful, leisurely lives, full of beauty and safety and security, that they had wished for, when Thingol made the decision that they would live within the embrace of the earth, rather than in the woods under the starlit sky. Elwing does not have caves, and she has no one who could delve caves out of rock; she does not even have rock of the sort or the size to delve. What she has is this sea of reeds, and Iathrim who will follow her commands, and Gondolindrim who have become content in following her commands due to her marriage to their lord, and Edain who will be dead soon enough, and whose opinions thus do not matter overmuch.

She can put her will to this task, she tells herself. She can put her will to the Silmaril and explore it more fully. She can take the Silmaril and use it to weave song and magic into the air around her, into the earth around her, into the buildings and the people around her.

This she does. This she does, until the air shimmers in the daylight and the nighttime alike, until the Sea might still sing with its own voice but all the still water within the camp sings with hers, until the dirt ground into the walls of the houses is invisible and the eyes of all those who live in this camp with her shine as if lit by pale fire, and until the pinched thinness of all the people who live in the Lisgardh is still highly visible in the skin stretched tight over wrists and cheekbones, but no one really cares much about it anymore, and Elwing thinks she may be the only person in the Lisgardh who can still feel her stomach aching at every single waking moment of her life, and sometimes in dreams as well.

Perhaps she can alter the camp so greatly that by the time white sails appear on the horizon once more and Eärendil returns home, he will only be able to recognize this place by its location upon a map, and by her face, and the face of their child, when that child is born, for it must surely bear enough of their features to be known to him. Perhaps he will come home and find a home so fair that he would never wish to leave it again, a home so fair that the song of the Sea can hold no further enticement to him.

Elwing thinks that she would like that. As her pregnancy progresses and the moment of birth grows nearer, she becomes more and more anxious at the idea of not having him with her when she gives birth. She knows that at this point, it is unlikely that he would be home in time for the birth of their child. There is no reason why he would be, considering it is not a child he even knows of. She knows that she cannot expect Eärendil to be home in time for their child’s birth, that it’s completely unreasonable to hold it against him when he can have no idea that he left his wife with her womb quickened with child. She knows this, and yet she longs to have him back here, and there are moments, deep in the inflamed watches of the night, when she must swallow down on something very close to resentment at another day and night passed that she must pass without his company, without his shoulder to lean on and his hand to hold. He regards his journeying as being of paramount importance, considering the purpose for which he takes to the Sea. Elwing knows how important he considers it all, but she knows also that it is a fool’s errand when the Rodyn will never allow them to pass beyond the invisible boundaries that separate the Undying Land from this world where many things indeed can die, and that there are many more things that Eärendil could be doing _here_ , with _her,_ so why can he not just—

There is something more to it. There is always something more to it, but Elwing has been feeling that ‘something more’ especially keenly, of late.

Elwing does not…

She sits alone in her chamber and brings a weary hand up to scrub at her brow. She is grateful that there is no one of her people to see her in such a state. Even heavy with child, she thinks it would draw comment, and not necessarily the flattering sort, either. There is only the Silmaril to bear witness, and the Silmaril is no gossip. The Silmaril will not go telling tales of her. It is a most comforting confidant, in that sense, though it can provide no shoulder for her to lean on. If it is not something that can provide the sort of comfort that flesh can provide, at least Elwing never has anything to fear regarding its discretion. She brushes her fingers against the surface of the jewel, and a tired smile spreads across her lips.

That smile does not last long, of course. She still has thinking to do, still has things she is obliged to admit to herself.

As her pregnancy has progressed, Elwing’s longing for Eärendil to return to her side has intensified, of course. But it is not only because the discomfort rooted in her body that makes her long for his return, though that discomfort is certainly _not_ inconsiderable. The longer Elwing’s pregnancy progresses, the more her anxiety regarding the future as regards to herself and this child intensifies. The closer she comes to the point where she knows she must give birth, the closer she comes to the point where motherhood is no longer an abstract and nebulous concept but her own new reality, the more she feels like her skin fits wrong on her body, the more she feels like her heart is trying to crawl out of her throat and her mind is trying to drop out of her body and leave her a frantic, out-of-sorts shell of herself. What that shell of herself would even look like, she does not know, not when she so often feels so hollow already, but she does not think she would ever care to meet it.

She has no family to confide in, and a confidant she can actually _speak_ to and hear words said back is something she sorely desires, at such a juncture as this. The physicians who examined her months ago refused to believe at first that she could be pregnant, for though her blood is not entirely that of the Edhil, they judge these things by the standards of the Edhil, and for an Edhel to find herself with child at such an age as Elwing’s would be… _improbable,_ to say the least. Imagine their surprise when the examinations they performed confirmed what Elwing had tried to tell them at the first. Imagine their unflattering, unnerving surprise, and then consider Elwing, contending with their unflattering, unnerving surprise, just how completely and utterly at a loss they were when they realized that their queen was, in fact, with child.

There have been unions between children of the Edhil (or those who are mostly Edhil, but bear some traces of blood from other peoples) and those unlike them before. But in those cases, the women in those couples were Edhil, and reached adulthood long before they married their husbands whose blood was unlike their blood. There is no precedence for _this_ , and thus, the physicians and midwives who have examined Elwing for the duration of her pregnancy have only been able to behave as they would if they were dealing with a patient whose blood was solely that of the Edhil. They know not how to contend with her, except for how they would deal with a woman of the Edhil who was full-grown by the standards of the Edhil, and all involved are painfully aware that Elwing is not such, and that things could potentially go quite differently with her, in more areas than one.

(There are whispers among the Iathrim regarding their… concerns. These, Elwing has tried to ignore, for they can do none of them any good, and it will just sink into her bones and set hooks there so that even when she tries to extract them, she cannot _truly_ extract them. But there is one she can never bring herself to ignore, no matter how much she wishes they could.

Some of her people whisper of the harm that could be done to the child by its father’s absence. These Edhil whisper of the widely-held belief that children who are not raised by both parents, children who do not have both parents present during the mother’s pregnancy will be… incomplete. She cannot ignore it. She cannot. She has been raised without either of her parents from the age of three, and _she_ certainly feels incomplete. It matches too closely with Elwing’s own experiences to be discounted. She will raise a child that might be incomplete, and unless the prospect of such is enough to jar Eärendil into staying in the Lisgardh until that child is grown, she does not see how she can avoid it.

She does not want it. She doesn’t know how to avoid it.)

Elwing does not have her family to seek guidance from in this time. She does not have her mother, which would be the most ideal, nor her father, who could likely have at least told her some tales of his parents, nor even her older brothers, who, while they would likely not have _known_ any more than she does, could at least have pledged to give her comfort. She has more distant kin, but she wants her _family_ , and she cannot have them, and she cannot really have her more distant kin, either, since asides from Thranduil, they all reside on the Isle of Balar and for whatever reason refuse to leave it behind them for good, no matter how much she needs them, no matter how much she wants them, for her needs and her wants are not enough to sway them, she must be enough for herself by herself, for they cannot—

Something caustic scalds and sloshes within Elwing’s chest cavity. It stings where it makes contact with her heart, and she endeavors to put it aside. How much success she achieves in that, she cannot be certain, for even after the sloshing sensation is gone, she still feels something prickling unmercifully against the surface of her heart. But she will try not to think of it. For as long as she can, she will try not to think of it. She cannot both be a queen and be someone who nurses grievances against her own kin. The grievances she nurses must be reserved for those who would destroy her utterly, if they were given the opportunity.

Elwing does not really have anyone to confide in, whom she can expect to serve as more than a silent receptacle of her words. It is so comforting to have a silent confidant in the form of the Silmaril, but it would be a greater comfort still to have a confidant whom she could expect to get something back from. It would be a great comfort to have someone she could turn to, someone she could show this sort of weakness to without having to worry about what that person would think of her for showing this weakness in the first place, for she is a queen and must show this sort of weakness to no one, but she is a wife as well, and she can always trust her husband to drink in the sight of it without allowing it to diminish what regard he has for her, for he is her husband but he is not her subject or her servant, the only equal she has in a place like this, and without him she is alone, with no one to turn to, she has only this jewel and it is a comfort but she wants _more_ than it and if he’s not here, she can’t—

Elwing wants what she imagines any woman wants, when she finds herself heavy with child and living in a situation that cannot honestly be described as ‘safe,’ let alone ‘secure.’ The Lisgardh’s only pretense at safety is the meager secrecy afforded by the thick forest of reeds that surrounds them. It is indeed meager, so meager that it is a rare thing when Elwing can truly believe it to be anything resembling a shield. Elwing wants what she imagines any woman must want, if that woman finds herself in the situation Elwing is in now. She wants the father of her child, if that man is a man worth knowing, to come back to her side and linger close, ready to lend a hand or a shoulder or a solicitous ear, ready to reassure her that whatever might befall her, he will be beside her, to help her see it through.

She cannot have that. Not yet. First, she must be strong enough to make the Lisgardh into a fair enough place to lure him back, and that will not be accomplished in a day. That will not be accomplished in a day, or a week, or a month. It might not be accomplished in a year. (If it is accomplished at all, but that is not something Elwing particularly wishes to face, not at this moment, not ever.) By the time Elwing’s work is done well enough for the rumors of it to reach Eärendil, most likely she will have given birth, and will be grappling with the question of how to raise their child to be complete when she does not know even how to make _herself_ complete as a concrete reality, rather than an abstract that likes to prowl at the edges of her dreams at night.

She cannot have it yet. She must be strong enough to lure him back, and though it feels as if there is no strength left in her body to reach for to perform such a feat, that makes no difference. She must try. She must always be willing to try.

Elwing sets her… It feels like setting aside every emotion that has ever struck a chord deep within her body, but she sets it all aside, and leaves her chamber behind in favor of the outside world. She cannot hide away from it forever. She has no choice.

-

Time wears on, and Elwing continues to go about her work. It draws comment from all who live in the Lisgardh, all who find relief in being able to live in a place that is, if not prosperous, at least beautiful. Cold envelops the land, and though Elwing can see below the illusion to see what withers with the cold, everyone else perceives the browning vegetation as green and lush, and to give them a little comfort in a world uneager to provide such, puts an emotion in her breast not unlike happiness, though it feels a little weak for that.

Is she happy?

No, Elwing is not happy. Her happiness must be a whole thing, and it is not, cannot. There are many things she wants, but there is only one that will give her satisfaction, only one thing that can make her whole, make her happy. Only one thing that can drive her down to the beach, even as her body becomes increasingly ungainly and her steps increasingly ponderous.

It is often, very often, that Elwing will stand on the beach, the frigid water that soaks the sand stinging her feet and her ankles. Those who act as her guards when she leaves the camp stand at a discreet distance, and she pretends not to notice them.

It is often, very often, that Elwing will stand on the beach, and she will see something she believes to be sails. For a moment, her heart leaps so high in her chest that she expects to feel it weighing down her tongue, though there is nothing so burdensome about the feeling as all that.

But then, her gaze clears, and that thing scatters into fluffy white clouds, and her heart sinks low into her gut, and she turns on her heel and makes back for the camp, unwilling to be deceived by clouds any longer.

(There are those who say her husband is blessed by Ulmo. Would that Elwing was high in the favor of Ossë and Uinen, regarded by all as a paragon of married couples, and who would no doubt agree that a husband’s place is at his wife’s side, especially when her condition is as precarious as Elwing’s currently is, and every obligation tethering her to the earth means also that she cannot go seeking him out.)

-

The long-awaited day comes for Elwing. No, not the day of Eärendil’s return. _That_ is still a mystery to her, for she has not inherited her great-grandmother’s gift of foresight, or if she has, it has yet to manifest itself, and not in any such helpful way as giving her an idea of when she should prepare for Eärendil’s return to his home. No, it is that _other_ long-awaited day that has come for Elwing, and no matter how long it has taken for it to arrive, it still feels too soon.

Later, the midwives will whisper of how well Elwing handled the pain. She does not see that that is particularly surprising. She has had a year to accustom herself to the idea that there will be pain, and no one thought to remove the Silmaril from its place around her neck, either (Not that she would have let them, not that anyone who tried to take her greatest treasure from her wouldn’t have found it to be the most difficult and unrewarding task of their lives, not that she would not have seriously considered banishment from this place entirely as an appropriate punishment for someone who sought to take her heirloom, _hers_ , from her). And she knows that the pain that plagues her heart and her mind in every waking hour is not pain of the same sort as the sort that will grip her body in childbirth, but it is still pain, and it was not so difficult as all that to adjust.

Later, the midwives will whisper of how well Elwing has handled the unremitting agony that is childbirth. They have given her wine to take the edge off of the pain, of course, but there is only so much wine you can safely give to a patient in such a situation as Elwing’s, and there is only so much wine in the camp to start with. Some of them, Elwing will hear a hint of awe creeping into their voices, for many of them have children of their own, and they do not remember enduring childbirth with _anything_ resembling the same level of composure when it was them giving birth to their own children. Especially considering Elwing’s small size and certain… other factors, they would have expected her to be absolutely beside herself with the pain of it.

There are those midwives who will whisper of Elwing’s relative composure as well, but what creeps into their voices is not awe. Or perhaps it is awe, but awe of a different sort entirely, an awe you would not care to have laid bare to the waking world, an awe you would not care to have laid bare to the scrutiny of those around you. Those who whisper of it in this manner, some of them do not have children of their own, but some of them _do_ , and Elwing cannot attribute their reactions to their childlessness as a result.

Is it natural, to be so quiet when giving birth? Is it natural, to be so lucid during childbirth? No, these midwives do not think so, not at all. Every midwife in the Lisgardh was champing at the bit to attend on the queen of the Iathrim while she gives birth to her heir, and every midwife who actually _succeeded_ in being allowed to attend upon the queen of the Iathrim while she gives birth to her heir has some sort of opinion on the way she comported herself during the momentous occasion. Some of those opinions are less than flattering.

Elwing already knew there were things about her that set her apart from those who surround her. It was difficult not to know this, when she alone seems to hear the voice and the song of the earth, when she alone seems to possess the power to look into the minds and read the thoughts of others around her to the extent that a closed door, these days, presents hardly any challenge to her at all. The blood of the Ainur flowing through her veins does certainly provide a clue to why she might be as she is, why it is that she can manipulate the Silmaril at all, but there are times when she wonders if that can account for all of it.

No, not ‘wonders.’ She _knows_ it cannot account for all of it. Elwing knows where the rest of it originates from. It comes from the same place that saw her wishing desperately the whole time that she could conjure her mother’s face, the same place that saw her prying and groping in the deepest recesses of her memory for anything that could potentially been even a _hint_ of her mother’s face or her voice. Something, _anything_ that she could have used to construct a simulacrum of her mother’s face, something she could have used that would have made her feel even a little less alone, at a time when she has never felt her loneliness more keenly.

But whatever the reason and whatever the reactions, Elwing bears up under childbirth with more composure than anyone around her expected to see from her, such an incredibly young, first-time mother. It has been a long-awaited day, after all. Elwing has had a great deal of time to prepare herself for it. She has had a great deal of time to pass whispered questions to those whom she knows have undergone the same experience, had more time to convince them to give her the unvarnished truth, not glossed over or softened in any way, and thus, she had some idea of what to expect. She had some idea of how to bear up under it with something resembling dignity, even if dignity was still occasionally punctuated with a strangled cry or a squeezed-out tear.

What comes after the birth, that is more difficult to bear with composure.

She spent the entirety of her pregnancy believing that it was one child growing within her, one child she would be struggling to raise to be complete and whole. _One_ _child_. She had not expected to be called upon to contend with anything other than that.

She had not expected to be called upon to contend with _twins_.

Elwing could scream when she looks down into the pink, wrinkled face of her newborn _twin sons_ , if she did not think that her screaming would draw more attention onto herself than she wants, would draw the sort of attention onto herself that she just cannot _bear_ , and it’s difficult at some moments to even remember why it is that she does not want that attention, why it is that she can’t just scream and scream and _scream_ —

She does not know which of the Rodyn governs irony. It is possible that irony is a force entirely apart from the Ainur, and cannot be governed by any power short of that of the One. It is even possible that irony is a force not unlike that of Ungoliant, that it is outside the normal, charted bounds of creation, that no one knows where it came from and no one knows its exact composition and no one knows what it wants and no one knows how to govern it properly. Irony could be something completely alien to the chords of the Song, and if that turns out to be so, Elwing does not think she will even be able to find it in her to be surprised.

Irony is a cruel thing, and that is why she thinks it might be alien to the chords of the Song, might be something completely ungovernable by the forces that influence this world. It is a cruel thing, and though the One might be responsible for the creation of so many fell things that inhabit this world, Elwing does not think she has ever heard tales of the One deliberately creating things that have no purpose other than to be _cruel_.

Irony is cruel, and it has taken the time to remind Elwing of just how cruel it can be, of just what depths it can sink to in the pursuit of hurting her as much as it possibly can.

Elwing stands over the crib that was carved when it was believed that she would be giving birth to just one child (a larger crib is currently being discussed, though there is also discussion of a second crib, so that the two infants will not be sharing a bed at such a delicate time of their lives), her hands clenched so tight on the rail that her already pale hands have bled completely white, from the backs of her hands to her fingertips, all traces of color gone in the face of what rages inside of her.

She will not scream. It is difficult to understand, at certain moments, why it is that she should not scream, but she will not scream. Elwing will not scream, but a little spate of hysterical laughter seeps past her lips, as tightly pressed together as they might be. She lets that little spate of laughter slip, and then she has to swallow down on the flood that surges up in her throat. The children have just fallen asleep, just ceased their thin, piercing cries that make her head ache as if someone has been beating it with a hammer. She wants to do nothing that could start that up again.

It must be irony, and irony must be laughing at her, and none too kindly, either. Twins are not a phenomenon that feature in Eärendil’s family line, neither that of the Exiles, nor that of the Edain. Twins are a phenomenon that do tend to run in families, but not in _Eärendil’s_ family. No, this comes from _Elwing’s_ blood, just as the two infants’ appearance, that comes from Elwing herself: hair as dark as moonless night, skin as white as snow, and if the eyes of those infants, retaining nothing of the blueness you see so often in newborns, is a dark akin to cloudy twilight, the hue is gray, as Elwing’s eyes are gray, rather than the marine blue that shimmers and dances in Eärendil’s eyes—

 _Eyes I have not seen in nearly a year, where_ is _he_

Another giggle threatens to bob out of Elwing’s mouth, this one harsher than the last, though no less hysterical than the last. At least, at _least_ Elwing’s mother’s starlit-silver hair has not chosen to make itself apparent in this generation, that the night-dark hair of Melian and Lúthien yet remains dominant, that at _least_ they do not have the starlit-silver hair another pair of twins once bore, and yet, Elwing cannot stand it, cannot stand it, can _not_.

Outside of this house, there is no one who seems to regard the issue in the same light as Elwing herself, and she cannot tell if it is that they have mostly thought better of voicing their true feelings aloud (for whatever reason), or if they truly feel as they seem outwardly to feel. Outside of this house, the camp that has been waiting with bated breath for the child who would be heir to both the Iathrim and the Gondolindrim have taken the news of _twin_ heirs with aplomb.

More than aplomb, really. The camp seems absolutely overjoyed by the news, to the extent that if there was enough wine to overflow, Elwing suspects that the wine would indeed be overflowing, that the brackish water where the Sirion meets the Sea would be tinted a deep, muddy red, as the heads of the Edhil swam with something that was not water at all. The only point of contention seems to be of which child is heir to which people—both the Iathrim and the Gondolindrim are firm and fixed in the belief that the elder of Elwing’s two infant sons should be heir to _their_ lost kingdom, and the younger take the other, and the contention began to set Elwing’s teeth on edge within moments of her becoming aware of it, how dare these people regard her children as bargaining chips, even if she cannot bring herself to regard the arrival of more than one child than expected with any joy, even if she still feels so fearful, how dare any others treat them the way she was treated as a child, how dare they see these children as a set of responsibilities and obligations before they see two children, not even a week old.

Celebrations, oh, celebrations, and Elwing sees nothing to celebrate. She has no expectation of being able to raise them to be whole unaided—with their father gone for these first few vital months (she cannot bring herself to suppose that he will be back soon, if he has not come back already), and likely to be gone for long stretches throughout their childhood, if he does not perish out on the wide and pitiless Sea, how is he to spend the appropriate time with them? How is he to impress upon them all of the love and guidance and lessons that children need (That Elwing was unable to get from her own parents, that was stolen from her so early on that she feels as if her spirit poured out through open wounds before she even reached her tenth year)? How are these children to be any more complete than Elwing is? How are they not to end up as empty as she feels, when she is not filled up with her own gnawing dread and tremendous hunger?

Speaking of hunger, one of the boys—the younger one, and Elwing has not named them yet, has no idea what to name them, what might succeed in not scoring her open like a blunt and rusty knife would—awakens and begins to make those thin, mewling noises that Elwing knows by now to be the precursor of wails, the telltale sounds of his own hunger begging to be sated. Elwing bites back a sigh and takes him up into her arms, and then over to the chair in the corner of the room.

Her milk has been… This really is not a body meant for nurturing, not really, and it has shown itself such in the way Elwing tries to feed her children, and cannot manage more than the most meager efforts. They’re looking into finding a nurse for the children, they’ll need one, but for now it’s just Elwing, and she is so afraid…

She holds the baby in her arms, lets him nurse, and tries to be happy. Indeed, everyone outside of this house would tell her that she has no reason _not_ to be happy, having apparently forgotten that all of the ills that have spent her life besetting her have hardly ceased to be now that she has found herself a new mother. (They will remember in time, she hopes. It is hardly as though the people living in this camp with her are not beset by troubles of their own, and surely they will remember those troubles in time. But sometimes Elwing wonders. She has made this place as fair as she can manage with the aid of the Silmaril, and perhaps that has caused certain among her people and among Eärendil’s as well to forget some of their troubles. She does not know that that is wise.) Everyone seems to think she should be happy, and thus, she does _try_ to be happy. She has children, now, and everyone seems to agree that a new mother should be filled with joy when dwelling upon her children.

Elwing does not feel happy. She only feels very afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Parental neglect; trauma; depression; obsession; assault]

Eärendil comes back, but only briefly. He stares at the children like they are apparitions rather than realities of flesh and blood. He stares at them like he cannot get used to, something he cannot believe is real. It’s not entirely flattering—actually, it’s not flattering at all, and if Elwing did not have moments when she stares at them in just the same way, she thinks she might be angered by it. As it is, she looks at the children and sees apparitions about half of the time, so she cannot rightly fault Eärendil for regarding them in the same light.

What she _can_ fault Eärendil for is that he lingers in the Lisgardh for but a month before he is marching down to the shoreline again. Elwing cannot chase after him and plead for him to come back, to stay in the Lisgardh with her and with their children. Her position is such that she cannot appear as a supplicant to any of her people—if Thingol, the forefather of her house, would not risk putting himself in a position where he could appear as a supplicant to _anyone_ , then Elwing, however inadequate a successor as she might be, must at least follow this example, and not put herself in such a position in full view of all of her people, and all of Eärendil’s. And there is something else beneath that need, something that stirs and roils within her like boiling water within a pot set over a fire. It whispers to her, whispers questions as to why she should have to go running after him just to try to convince him to stay by her side. Does she not deserve that automatically? Does she not deserve more of him than protestations that what he does is for her sake, and the sake of their children? Does she not deserve his presence, his _help_? Should he not know these things well enough to think on his own that he should put aside whatever it is that he might hope to find on the waters of the Sea, and stay on the land with her?

(Eärendil has the Sea pouring dreams and desires and longing into his mind. Elwing has something similar, something as ubiquitous to her as the Sea is to him, for she wears it on her skin. She bends the Silmaril to her will, and if she will suffer no one taking it from her, then that is her _right_ , for it is hers by right of inheritance, and she has pushed aside any thoughts of it having been obtained by theft, for she cannot bear to think of it in such a light, cannot bear to think that her fears of losing it might be in any way justified by how it became hers in the first place, and thus she does not.

Elwing has the Silmaril, but she also has her duty, and Eärendil has his as well. Only one of them is shirking their duty in favor of what calls to them so sweetly and so insistently. Would that ‘one’ could become ‘neither.)

Elwing will not chase after him. Eärendil might be expecting her to, but he can go on expecting it, and Elwing will go on refusing to live up to those expectations. There is too much clinging to her to let her dignity drop away like that. She will not call after him. He can go to the Sea if he wishes, and if he wishes to die on the Sea after the Rodyn finally decide that turning him back towards Ennor is not a strong enough statement to impress upon him the full force of their refusal to let him in to their lands, he can do that, as well. (She does not want that. Truly, she does not want that, even though something in her heart boils on the second occasion of his leaving and asks her how tethered he must really consider himself to her, if he can so easily go somewhere he could easily be killed, knowing that he would be leaving his wife alone on the shores of the Sea to live her life without him, until the Enemy finally sees fit to destroy the Edhil utterly and they are reunited once more. She does not wish for him to die, but sometimes she wonders if he is even _thinking_ about it when he leaves her behind. She thinks sometimes to ask, when next she sees him, if she ever sees him again, but she fears the answer too much to risk having to hear it.)

Elwing will not chase after him. She has too much to do here. She supposes she should prepare for life without a husband, or life with a husband who flits in and out as he pleases. She supposes she should prepare for a life in which she tries and fails to raise her children to be whole. A life full of disappointment, then, but Elwing has never expected her life to be any different. Even though she has manipulated the Silmaril to turn the camp in the Lisgardh into a place that seems so very fair, that is just a matter of appearance, and it can never erase the empty, aching spot in the pit of her stomach, which she can never eat enough food at once to fill.

Elwing learns not to go down to the Sea. She does not wish to give too much attention to a victorious rival, after all. Who would?

-

Elwing pours her spirit and her heart into the land, pours her time and her will into her duties as queen of the Iathrim, and occasionally, occasionally, she finds time to devote to her children in between all of that. None of it brings her any joy. The longer this goes on, the more…

She’s not certain ‘tired’ is quite the right word for it. Her body always feels as if it would rather be trudging towards bed, and it does indeed feel the same way now, but her mind is wide awake. Her mind is wide awake, and constantly racing. Elwing has her thoroughly awake mind, constantly running over possibilities and scenarios regarding the future, and most of them bad. What if she loses her ability to manipulate the Silmaril? What if it is stolen from her, and the enchantments she has woven over the camp in the Lisgardh dissipate, leaving them in the same sort of dim and dank hovels they inhabited before? (That they still inhabit, but at least do not have to think about as long as the enchantments hold, as long as the enchantments Elwing has woven make everything appear so fair to all their eyes?) What if she injures herself in such a way as to be unable to carry out her duties as queen? What if something befalls the children, her heirs? What if Eärendil perishes out on the open Sea and news of it never reaches Elwing, who could spend potentially the rest of her life waiting for a return that will never occur, waiting for a notification of death that will never occur, either, for all witnesses would be swallowed up by the same pitiless Sea? What if that pitiless Sea chooses to rise up and swallow the camp whole, no longer satisfied with occasionally flooding the floors of their houses during very high tides?

This is what plagues her during her waking hours, and follows her into dreams as well, though the dreams are naturally considerably more disjointed than those thoughts that assail her while awake. She wonders, many times, if Thingol and Dior ever felt the same way. Surely, _surely_ , the timbre of their thoughts must have been different, if they ever experienced such thoughts at all. Thingol and Dior were kings over a whole and complete kingdom, and even if Dior was without his grandmother’s power securing the borders of Doriath, he still had his wife to act as the heart of Menegroth, to grant _some_ protections to the place.

But did they ever feel this sort of creeping worry? Did they ever find themselves assailed by constant gnawing thoughts regarding every last horrible thing that could happen to them and their people? Did they ever have days when they worried constantly about the possibility of the Silmaril being stolen from them? (Stolen as Lúthien and Beren stole it, worrying about it the way someone who has won something by theft must always worry about their prize being stolen away from them, as well?)

Even if they did, there is no record of it, no tales of the worries of Elu Thingol or Dior Eluchíl. They were kings, true kings, and as such, they never let their uncertainty slip in front of anyone who might carry tales of it away from them, in any situation where they could have lost face by showing their worries openly. Elwing has no guide here, but then, she’s had no guide in so many things, so why should this be any different?

There is only one thing to do. There is only one thing she _can_ do, to avoid being mired down by a broken, bleeding past. To avoid being mired down, to avoid being crushed or drowning or anything else that might befall her, she must keep moving forward.

She must keep moving forward, until the past comes racing up to meet her, blood in its hands and terror in its eyes.

-

The first letter finds her in a chilly spring that has seen many overly high tides pouring water into the floors of their houses, has seen Elwing pinning her skirt above her knees and bailing water out of a window while her children watch her from their perch atop a table. She was not expecting it. Elwing might entertain many vague fears regarding theft and violence, but she was not expecting a _specific_ manifestation of those fears to find her in the waking world. She was not expecting it. Who would expect it?

(Later, she will wonder if _she_ should not have been expecting it. Later, there will be many who will tell her that, yes, she _should_ have been expecting it. She will be chastised and pitied in equal measure. For now, Elwing has no idea of that particular aspect of her future. She has not conceived it. She does not care to conceive it. One thing at a time, one thing at a time. What she’s dealing with now is unpleasant enough, all by itself.)

The first letter finds her in the morning, a chilly spring morning, and when Elwing breaks the seal and reads the words, when she realizes what this _is_ , chilly spring feels more like deepest, darkest winter, and she feels as if she has been plunged into a night from which there is no reprieve.

It’s not…

It’s not that the letter is even overtly threatening. It hardly _needs_ to be, considering the identity of the sender, considering his reputation, considering what he has done to _earn_ that reputation. Such a personage as Maedhros, son of Fëanor, must surely never see the need to write threats explicitly into any of his correspondence. The threat is implied by his name.

It’s not that the letter is overtly threatening. It would never have needed to be, considering the writer. The tone of the letter is… When Elwing is once again in a state to consider such things, when she finds herself able to _think_ at all after the panic has subsided enough to allow for such things, she will reflect with some displeasure upon the tone of the letter. It is downright high-handed, the way he reminds her of the original owner of the Silmaril which now is hers, downright patronizing in the way protection is offered in exchange for the return of that which ceased to belong to him and his kind long ago. That he is by birth a prince of the Ñoldor is _nothing_ compared to the beast he has become. How dare something that is an Orc in all but flesh speak to her as if she is a child to be remonstrated with? How dare the butcher of her family speak to her of what is obligated, what is _owed_? This man is owed nothing but death and eternal imprisonment in the Houses of the Dead; how _dare_ he?

Elwing’s anger can buoy her for a while. At its height, it feels like something that could potentially buoy her forever. But she knows that that cannot be so, and when her anger begins to dispel, for as she had thought, it must surely dispel eventually, she is left instead with something that feels more apt to drag her down deep below the surface of the earth, not into a comforting and secure embrace, but into a crushing tomb, the only escape from which is the point of a sword, digging her out of the earth so that it can bury itself in her instead. When you are left with this, you have no choice but to face it. The alternative is an oblivion that comes on more quickly than any of the alternatives that might come and find you out. You must, you must, you _must_ face it, no matter how much it feels like being scoured.

They’ve been found.

They’ve been found.

The butchers of their kin, of their families, know where to find them, now.

Secrecy was their only defense, for Elwing can do many things with the Silmaril, but she has never endeavored beyond the most basic efforts to do something with it that could even remotely be construed towards a _defense_ of the camp, and even that drained her so badly that she slept for days and felt for days after she woke as if she had drank an entire cask of wine in one sitting and followed that up by allowing a blacksmith to strike her over the head with a hammer. She has learned well enough the lesson that all she can do with the Silmaril is create images and illusions. She has learned well enough not to put her will towards other endeavors.

Secrecy was their only defense, for the Iathrim and the Gondolindrim are diminished and the Edain are dead and they have not the force of arms or the numbers to adequately defend themselves against their foes. Secrecy was their only defense, for who can stand against the might of Morgoth Bauglir? Secrecy was their only defense, for whatever else the Kinslayers might be, they are also the mightiest warriors of the Edhil yet living, and there are none among the Iathrim or the Gondolindrim of this camp in the Lisgardh who can stand against them and hope to do anything but die.

Secrecy was their only defense, and now it is gone. Elwing hisses through her teeth when she thinks of it, when at last she finds some time alone to think of it. All the secrecy of their feeble attempts to trade with other settlements for food, all the winters of meager meals and ever-diminishing stores of food, all the sleepless nights spent staring at the patch of red bathing her chamber wall, wondering if it might ever become red for a reason other than fires burning so far off into the north, all of it was for _nothing_. If the Kinslayers can find this camp so easily, then all of it must have been for nothing. They must have only put their wills towards trying to find Elwing and what is rightfully hers recently, must have only turned their attention away from licking the wounds inflicted upon them at Menegroth only recently. They have been found out so easily, and the idea of it puts the earth to shifting and shaking beneath Elwing’s feet more than any high tide or earthquake ever could.

(Later, there will be those who will tell Elwing that it is because of the work she wrought with the Silmaril that her camp was discovered by those who wish to take it back into their bloodied hands. There will be those who tell her that the stories of the fairness of the camp in the Lisgardh slowly trickled out of the Lisgardh itself, that these tales slowly spread all over Beleriand, and that the Sons of Fëanor, who have had so much experience of the Silmaril and what it can do, knew immediately what those tales meant.

Perhaps that is true. Those who approach Elwing to tell her so are not those who were in Beleriand when such tales would have been spreading, and seem to be guided only by their own supposition. If they truly are guided only by their own supposition, how is Elwing supposed to know whether or not they speak with any truth?

Perhaps it is true that it was Elwing’s own work that drew the Kinslayers to her doorstep. Perhaps it is true that her efforts to make her life something other than what it was, however mixed the results might have been, were ultimately the undoing of everything she had ever known her life to be. Elwing does not want to think of it in such terms. She does not want to think of her life as something that was always doomed to have everything stolen away from her, not by the Kinslayers, anyways. By their greatest Enemy, perhaps, for his might is something entirely removed from the might of the Edhil. But she does not want to think about destruction at the hands of the Kinslayers as something that was just inevitable. She doesn’t want to think about it like that. It’s comforting to think of it that way, and that’s why. There is a danger to that sort of comfort. The danger is that she might sink into it, and then never emerge, until the moment when it would be her corpse emerging, and her spirit long gone from it.)

Elwing could never hope to keep the letter secret forever, and thus, she has not even tried. The mood in the camp is… about what you would expect, honestly. It is not pleasant. It is not air you would want to breathe for too long, if you had any other choice. They should know. They should know what’s coming for them. Elwing will not keep it from them.

There are those in the Lisgardh who think that Elwing should give the Kinslayers what they seek, though they have quickly learned to keep their mouths shut regarding this opinion. They are not the greater part of her people, nor the Gondolindrim. The greater part of both peoples feel that Elwing should not give up what is hers to those who could only ever hope to win it back through bloodshed. (The greater part of both peoples say nothing as to how the Silmaril became the possession of Elwing’s line to start with.) So there is that, at least, but still, Elwing can find no comfort in such a thing as the majority of the people whose lives she has enriched with her tool believing that she should retain custody of it, regardless of the remonstrations of blood-soaked murderers.

How is she supposed to find comfort in that? How is she supposed to find comfort in anything? How is Elwing supposed to take comfort in the idea that most of her people believe that she should retain possession of the Silmaril, when there are forces out there that desire to steal it from her, and have every opportunity to do so, and no qualms about ripping the Silmaril off of her cooling corpse? How is Elwing supposed to take comfort in the idea that when the Silmaril is finally taken from her, it will come down to force? She is small, she is weak of body; she knows entirely too well the limits of her ability to fight off a thief, let alone a thief who happens to be one of the mightiest warriors ever produced by the Edhil. There is no comfort to be found in this at all.

Elwing paces the bounds of her room, back and forth, back and forth, like a hunting hound bound in a cage, but once the cage doors are loosed, Elwing does not know that she will go tearing out like a hunting hound would, does not know that she will be fit to do anything but stand there and cower at the thought of what might try coming into the cage with her. For now, Elwing is content to remain in the cage. In the cage, nothing can touch her, and she can think.

What are they supposed to do? What are they even supposed to do? Elwing caresses the Silmaril with one shaking hand. She will not surrender it for love or for riches, she will not surrender it should all the world be set against her, she will not surrender it should it mean her death, will not surrender it should it mean the death of all else that lives. But what are they to _do_?

Fighting is right out, for every last reason that has been illustrated before. They cannot fight and hope to win, cannot fight and hope to do anything but die, and die in droves. They cannot petition the Ainur for protection, for the Ainur have forsaken them utterly. They cannot flee, for where could they possibly go? There is not enough room on the Isle of Balar for even half their number, and Elwing will not go to a place where the Exiles have such a strong presence. And where else in Beleriand is there that could shelter such a large number of refugees? The Taur-im-Duinath, perhaps, but Elwing has heard rumors that that place is occupied as well, and by the sort of people she would never care to meet, or by things that are not people at all, and thus things that she would care to meet even less than the dregs of society left over from the fall of so many lost kingdoms.

No, if they flee, they will have to flee out of Beleriand altogether, either east over the mountains, or south into lands no one among Elwing’s people is familiar with. If they flee, they must flee a long time before they can even hope to find a place where they could be safe, and while they are moving, they shall be more vulnerable than they have ever been in this camp in the Lisgardh—and considering that their only protection was the fact that, for a long time, none of their enemies could figure out where they were, that says something Elwing would sooner not have to acknowledge.

If they flee, perhaps not all of them will die. If they flee, then certainly, many of them will die. Most likely most of them will die, for Beleriand is haunted by bands of Orcs that kill Edhil wherever they can find them, and there are few warriors among Elwing’s people.

They cannot fight. They cannot count upon the intervention of the Ainur. They cannot flee, and expect the better part of them to still be alive by the time they find somewhere else that is safe to settle.

So.

Elwing is struck by an inertia that makes the decision to stay where she is perhaps easier, perhaps much easier, than it would have been. She thinks Eärendil, were he the one making this decision and not her, would have chosen to flee. But Eärendil _isn’t here_ , Elwing is, and she must make these decisions alone. So that, she will do, and she will endeavor as best she can not to think of the different ways Eärendil might have chosen to act, were he here.

Elwing runs over scenarios in her mind, measures that could be taken in _some_ attempt to stave off what must now surely be coming, sooner or later. They could dig trenches in the Lisgardh, fill them with water—but the ground everywhere in the Lisgardh but where they have made their camp is too soft and too treacherous for the trenches to hold their shape for long, and if any among the Kinslayers can swim, they could harvest wood from Arvernien or the Taur-im-Duinath and construct a pontoon bridge. Trenches, even trenches that could somehow hold their shape, are a measure that will buy them weeks, at the very most. And meanwhile, what are they to do? Fleeing has already been deemed impractical, and fleeing while within such a short distance to the Kinslayers will only make them easy targets for tracking, or for burning arrows.

Wringing concessions out of Maedhros is… No. No, she will not countenance that. No compromise, not with _them_ , not concerning _this_.

Assassination holds a sweet, dark appeal for just a moment, before it sours in her mouth and it loses its appeal completely. Suppose, for just a moment, that it was at all plausible that such a thing could be accomplished. Elwing does not think that there are many who would condemn her. The Gondolindrim are kin to the Kinslayers, and thus can never be fully trusted to speak honestly in such matters, but Turgon condemned the Kinslayers when news of the butchery they wreaked in Menegroth reached him. He declared them whom he already loved little vile and accursed, swore never to give them succor even in their most dire need, and bound his people to this oath, as well. It does go to show you, just how friendless the vile and wicked truly are, in a world with any semblance of justice.

There are few who would seriously think to stop her, and those must inevitably be found in the camps of the Kinslayers. There are few who would condemn her. Most likely, there are few who would even call it kinslaying. If Elwing was to rid the world of the Kinslayers, most would tell her that she had done the world a service. Some would no doubt tell her that she was well within her rights to do it, to avenge her murdered father (she will soon be older than he ever was, and the knowledge burns Elwing’s heart like a brand), her murdered mother, her murdered brothers.

Perhaps… Perhaps it is justice. Certainly, killing Orcs in all but name does not _feel_ like murder, let alone like _kinslaying_. Perhaps it would quiet the dead a little, for though Elwing cannot hear their lamentations all the way in Ennor, she can imagine all too well the way they must clamor in the Houses of the Dead. Sending the Kinslayers to the only place beasts like them belong does not feel wrong.

But still, something in Elwing cries out in protest at the idea of using one of _their_ tools to solve a problem, even a problem of such dire import as this. Her hands are not stained with blood. She has never killed anyone. She has never even killed or jointed an animal set for the cookpot—no one around her has ever believed that a task fit for a queen. She does not have the experience of killing. She does not know that she _could_.

Oh, if it is to be assassination, then Elwing would no doubt send others out to do the deed for her. If it is to be assassination, Elwing suspects that she would not even be present to watch it happen. If it is to be assassination, Elwing will come away from the assassination with no blood dripping from her fingertips.

But there would be blood on her hands, nonetheless. She might not have caused the death herself, but she would still have ordered it. Even if no blood ever smears Elwing’s skin, she will still be able to feel it buried deep into the lines on her palms, buried deep beneath her fingernails. The fact that she cannot see it means only that it would be difficult to clean off.

She does not want to debase herself. She does not want to bring herself down to the level of those who mean her harm. She does not wish to do anything that could render herself unworthy of the Silmaril.

So, no, assassination is something she must certainly discount. There will be no murdering the murderers, even if killing them is something all the world would call justice.

That leaves Elwing right where she started, with no options available to her but to stay right where she is, and wait for whatever might come.

That… That is not ideal, not at all. Elwing pauses in her pacing, gnawing on her thumb as a scream pitches high and screeching in her throat, trying to scrape its way out of her mouth, though it is not something she would ever give voice to, not something she will allow to rule her (Not yet. Maybe later).

What she can do, for now, is write no letter in response, and waylay the messenger—not even one of the Kinslayers’ following, but a Laegel enlisted to act as a go-between, and perhaps Elwing can use that to her advantage—for as long as she can, stalling for as long as she can. Elwing does not know how best to spend the time that buys her, if there is anything to do at all. She does not know that there is anything that can be done, but a little more time, a little time to stave off their destruction a little longer, this does not seem like such a bad thing.

As Elwing exits the room to go back out and feed the messenger what excuses she can spin with only a few moments’ notice, she wonders giddily if perhaps she can expect a sudden wildfire to roar up and kill the Kinslayers for her. Perhaps a rockslide, if their current base is anywhere near the mountains or the hills. Being hit by a falling star would be acceptable, as well.

-

Elwing leaves her house to find that while she has been gone, the messenger has been beaten so severely that he has been left barely conscious. His blood drips slowly to the ground, he sways on his feet, and none of Elwing’s people will admit to having been the one who attacked him.

Well. That puts paid to any hope she had of stalling. Elwing entertains visions of what will most likely happen to the man if she does not send him away now, and she does not think she wishes to deal with that sort of trouble, on top of everything else she has been obliged to contend with.

Elwing has a physician—a physician she trusts not to add any more bruises overtop of the fresh ones, a physician she trusts to bandage up the cuts, rather than pour salt into them—treat the messenger as well as can be possible under the rushed circumstances, and sends him on his way. She considers sending him off with an escort all the way out of the Lisgardh, but Elwing thinks better of that and compromises having a few fleet-footed guards—again, guards she trusts to do no ill, as much as she can trust any of her people to do no ill, after being confronted with this—go out ahead of him into the reeds, to ensure that no one lies in wait to render him any further harm.

Elwing does not apologize for it. The words are stuck in her mouth. What she does instead is watch him go, and bite back the angry scream rising in her throat. She would love to let it loose, would love to let fly her anger at having this one stalling tactic taken out of her hands, but she has no idea who the scream would be best directed at. Screaming at empty air has never felt anything like cathartic.

And she has no time to scream. She must confer with her lords.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Edain** —Men of the three houses (the Houses of Bëor, Hador and Haleth) who were faithful to the Elves throughout the First Age; after the War of Wrath they were gifted with the land of Númenor and became known as the Dúnedain; after the Akallabêth they established Arnor and Gondor (singular: Adan) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Laegel** —a Green-Elf of Ossiriand, a member of that division of the Nandor who were led by Denethor (plural: Laegil) (class plural: Laegrim) (Sindarin); the name was imposed upon them by the Sindar, because of the lush forests of their land, because of their especial love for the forests and waters of their land, and because the Laegrim often dressed in green as camouflage  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Contemplation of death, contemplation of suicide]

A second letter arrives soon after the first, this one by bird, rather than by any Edhel messenger—Elwing is stung by the change in delivery method, and can only _wish_ that she could say nothing had happened to justify it. The tone of the letter is, aggravatingly, little different from the rest, and the _difference_ is that Maedhros has chosen to make officious comments regarding the protections messengers are expected to enjoy, anywhere in the world that they might go, regardless of the circumstances under which they might travel. Upon reading those comments, Elwing feels… You know, violence is appealing to her for just a moment longer, when she reads those comments. Not against any messenger, but against Maedhros himself. And Elwing does not envision sending out an assassin to do her bidding. She envisions jumping upon him and scratching out his eyes with her fingernails, for _how dare he?_

Elwing has run every potential scenario she can think of through her mind, and can think of none that would not land her people in a worse situation than what they currently inhabit. She has conferred with her lords, conferred with the lords of the Gondolindrim who look to her to lead them when Eärendil is absent, and none of them can think of anything that Elwing, by herself, might have missed. They all feel, as she feels, that to fight would be to die, though they feel also that if they are assailed, they should at least offer as much violence as they are given. They feel, as she feels, that fleeing would do them no good, when the Kinslayers could just follow them to wherever they went next, if something else did not beset them first. And though there are some among the common people who might whisper of giving the Silmaril to those who demand it, however little they might deserve it, none of those people are to be found among the lords of either the Gondolindrim or _especially_ the Iathrim. The Silmaril is theirs, or rather, the Silmaril is _Elwing’s_ , and is put to use bettering the lives of those in the Lisgardh. Why should it be surrendered to any thug who comes up to them with a sword, threatening to use it if they do not turn over their treasure? Why should the Lisgardh be forced to give up its greatest treasure to a pack of roaming beasts?

There is nothing to do. Nothing to do but give no replies to any of the letters sent to them, and wait.

And there are more letters. No one ever told Elwing that Maedhros, son of Fëanor, out of every last vile thing he is, also happens to be a prolific letter-writer. Or perhaps he is not, and it is only her who is so… _fortunate_ as to be on the receiving end of a sudden burst of literary aspirations on the part of this man. Over time, the tone goes from officious and demanding to more gently persuasive, and then finally to something close to wheedling, before they drop off altogether.

Elwing does not know what to think of the fact that the letters have stopped. She does not know what she fears more. Whatever it is she fears more, that is most likely to be the truth of the matter, but Elwing does not _know_. She has so many fears, all of them clamoring in her mind at once. She cannot sort them out well enough to know which one takes primacy in her mind. She can barely even _breathe_ when she thinks of them; she does not want to take the time to measure them against each other, when that runs the risk of seeing her faint and land too heavily upon the unforgiving ground for her own comfort. She does not know to think of the fact that the letters have stopped.

Elwing…

She has avoided the Sea for some time, now. Here, _here_ , living here, it is impossible to avoid the Sea in full. You cannot avoid the Sea in full, when you live so close to it, and when the water that squelches beneath your feet when you venture outside the bounds of your home forever tastes of salt.

It is impossible to avoid the Sea in full, living in the Lisgardh, but Elwing has done her best. She truly does not think it good practice to pay too much mind to a victorious rival, especially considering how fleeting her husband’s returns to the camp have been over the past several years. She does not want to go before the Sea, and risk having to listen to the Sea develop a voice full comprehensible to her ears just so it can gloat. What she _wants_ is for things between herself and the Sea to be as they were when she was a child, and the Sea was something to her that reflected the Song that made the world, when the Sea was something that promised her that she would never be harmed within its bounds, except by her own will. She cannot have that. She knows she cannot have that. She knows that she can never regard the Sea in the same light, after it took her husband away from her.

It is impossible to regard the Sea in the same light as she did when she was a child, but it is impossible also to avoid it forever. When the wind blows very hard and flattens the reeds towards the ground, you can see a glint of blue that is not sky quite easily from the camp, provided there are no houses in the way. Even in the camp, sight of the Sea cannot be avoided forever. It is ubiquitous. It cannot be denied.

It cannot be denied, and thus, there must come a day when Elwing no longer endeavors to deny it. There must come a day when Elwing walks down to the shore once more.

She is alone, this time, truly alone. She has ordered her guards to remain up in the reeds, out of sight. They are out of her sight, and she thinks she might be out of theirs. She hopes so. She does truly hope that she is beyond their scrutiny. She does not want their scrutiny, not while she confronts the Sea. Not while she brings herself before the Sea once more.

So. Elwing stares out on the blue expanse, at the shadow on the horizon of the Isle of Balar. She stares out on the expanse of water, seemingly never-ending, and heaves a long, shaky sigh.

So. Here she is.

Elwing finds herself doing what she once so often did. She scours the horizon for any hint of white that she might not be able to attribute to clouds. The Kinslayers are vile and accursed among all of the Rodyn, and that must surely include the Lord of the Sea. She cannot imagine them being able to take to a ship and do anything but sink and drown. If she sees a ship on the horizon, surely she can believe it be Eärendil, surely she can assume that he…

No, nothing. Elwing never sees any hint of sails when she looks for them, never sees any hint of her husband when she looks for him. He’s gotten to being very good at not being around when Elwing needs him, and Elwing’s eyes have gotten to be very good at tricking her into believing that fluffy white clouds close to the horizon might just be sails.

Eärendil has gotten to being very good at not being around when Elwing needs him, but he had best be home soon, if he desires ever to be home again. If he dawdles too long out wherever he is, battering against the invisible doors into those waters belonging to the Undying Lands, he may well come home to burned and blackened ruins, may well come home to a dead wife and two dead children. And maybe—Elwing sucks in a harsh, rattling breath, and no, it does not hurt, it _does not hurt_ —maybe his only response to that will be to turn right around and go back out to Sea. Maybe this would not provide even the smallest stumbling block to his voyages trying to reach the Undying Land and appeal before the uncaring Rodyn. Maybe, maybe. She does not think she wants to think about that, anymore.

No, let us think of the Sea. That is… That is not much more comforting, if Elwing is being very honest, but it isn’t quite the thing that is inspired within her when she imagines her own butchered and burned corpse.

The tide is tremendously loud this day, so loud that Elwing cannot even hear the grumbling of her stomach, empty as it almost always is, over its roars. The Sea is good at doing that, good at obliterating all other sensations in the face of its… its _size_. Elwing has always been aware of the Sea as something completely, totally massive, always been aware of it as something completely immeasurable, but it is not until this day that she has found herself aware of just how _small_ she is by comparison to it. The Sea is vast and unending, wrapping about all the land like a twinkling blue mantle, if a mantle was stuffed full of creatures fit to rend you limb from limb. The Sea is vast and unending, and all that comes to stand before it must find themselves rendered immeasurably tiny by comparison.

For a long moment, Elwing stares out at the sloshing waters—murky closer to the shore, capped with dingy white foam that reminds her more of soiled wool than snow, a prettier, clearer blue the further out you look, until the point where water meets sky, and all is murky and muddled once more—and considers something she had previously discounted. It feels like the fancy of a child, or perhaps a little more like the ravings of a madman, but consider, perhaps…

Ulmo has been rather less rigid in his abandonment of the Edhil than his brethren. Though his “help” has been, at the best of times… something that can scarcely be called that, honestly, it’s been better than the nothing offered up by the others. And Elwing, though queen of the Iathrim, is also a daughter of the Lindar. The Lindar are favored in Ulmo’s eyes, and she dwells at the mouth of a river said to be especially loved by him. If there is anything she can do with that, even if his help is not enough to really make a difference when the day of reckoning comes, shouldn’t she at least try?

Elwing lets her mind unfurl. She lets her ears open, and her heart cry out. All the time, she strains every sense for some sign of a response, be it the weakest, most distant glimmer imaginable of a voice off out in the waters, miles away from shore.

Desperation and something dangerously akin to hope keep Elwing rooted to the shore for far longer than it takes her to realize that all she is hearing is silence. There is the Sea, the immense weight of water sloshing endlessly back and forth, and behind it all, she can discern nothing but the echoes of her own feeble voice, and the hunger that gnaws at the edges of the syllables.

She has often felt alone when standing before the Sea, even if there are others standing with her. Today, she has learned to feel small when standing before the Sea. That is new. But the bitter disappointment filling her mouth with its bile? No, Elwing is perfectly familiar with that sentiment.

Of course, she already knew this, but to have it hammered in so starkly sends her turning on her heel and refusing to give the water so much as another glance as she makes her way back into the marsh.

She is on her own.

-

When it happens, can she die well?

This is the question that plagues Elwing every night once she has been left alone with her thoughts, so keen and so cruel that it keeps her up late into the night, begrudging her no more than three or four hours of sleep before Anor’s first light begins to creep over the edge of the eastern horizon. She had never thought to find something that could preoccupying her more intensely in the night than the fires raging in the north, but here she is, trapped between red light and red thoughts, and it is the red thoughts she feels more keenly. They dog her every waking breath, chew on the edges of her thoughts if she dares try to think of anything else, and only when she finally gives in and dwells upon them fully do they quiet a little, though only enough for Elwing to fall into them, rather than simply be battered for them.

When it happens, is she capable of dying well? Elwing runs the question in her mind over and over and over again, until the syllables feels as if ingrained in her skin, until the question mark feels as if someone has taken a knife and carved it into the fibers of her brain. She must be familiar with all of the aspects of it, all of the facets, every last secret it might hold. She does not know when the knowledge will become relevant to her, but it will be soon, she knows. It will be very soon, now.

Though she might be a child of the deathless Eldar, Elwing has always been acquainted with death. She has always thought about death, for as long as she can remember. Death has always been a part of her life. Child of murdered parents, sister of murdered boys, she must be acquainted with death, she _must_ , for death will accept nothing less. That which steals away the living, it has always dogged Elwing’s steps, though it has never before touched her so closely as all _this_. Eärendil has come home to the Lisgardh bearing tales, of course, but Elwing has never heard him tell tales of near-death experiences out on the high seas. Elwing has never suffered any serious accidents. Neither have their children. The last time death came so near to her, it was the last time the _Kinslayers_ came near to her, and now that that latter occurrence is about to repeat, she cannot help but wonder—

She should not. It is doing her no good. She’s barely sleeping, and after enough nights of barely sleeping, she has barely been able to stay _awake_ during the day, let alone concentrate as she needs to to carry out duties that _still_ are hers, even at moments of terrible stress. It’s eating her from the inside out, without pause or mercy, and she cannot go on like this, can _not_. She cannot go on like this, but she cannot see a path to quieting her thoughts and calming her mind enough to sleep as she ought, not when she knows that somewhere out past the bounds of what her eyes can see, there are people coming to kill her and loot her corpse of her greatest treasure, not when she knows that the people who butchered her family are riding west to finish what they started years ago.

So… Can she die well?

Thingol was not given a chance to even _try_ to die well. He was stabbed in the back by treacherous craftsmen, and died choking on his own blood, likely before he even fully understood what was happening to him, as the Naugrim ran off with their ill-gotten gains. If he had been given that chance, Elwing has no doubt that he would have been able to die well. He was, after all, the forefather or her line, a veritable giant among Edhil, both literally and figuratively. A man like that must have had within his mind the knowledge of how to die without humiliating himself or his descendants. A man like that must have had the sort of heart that would allow him to show more dignity and valor in death than his murderers had ever shown in their blighted, miserable lives, if only he was given the chance.

Dior… There have been many tales told in Elwing’s hearing of the last hour of her father’s life. He did battle with Celegorm, the villain who had attempted years ago to abduct his mother and force her into unwanted, bigamous marriage, and even as Celegorm sunk his wicked blade into Dior’s heart, Dior slashed his dagger across Celegorm’s throat, and thus he did avenge the insult that Celegorm, third son of Fëanor, once did to Lúthien Tinúviel, she who should have been totally untouchable by the likes of him. A death that in the same stroke managed to avenge his mother’s bruised honor upon the worst of her enemies, yes, that was a good death.

Can Elwing manage anything of such a caliber?

She cannot wield a weapon. She has never been taught, and she has little strength in her limbs to do the wielding. She certainly cannot fall in battle in the exact manner her father fell. (She wishes, sometimes, that tales were told of her mother’s death, but the death of the heart of Menegroth is something too sad and too terrible to ever be immortalized in a song, no matter how it is exactly that Nimloth died. Perhaps, if it was not too sad and too terrible, Elwing would be able to take something away from it, about how to die with no weapon in hand, and still retain the dignity required of a queen.) She cannot hope to strike a mortal blow against one of her attackers as they chase the life out of her opening veins. When faced with an attacker intent on killing her, Elwing cannot hope to do anything but die.

Elwing has questioned of herself, over and over again, if she is worthy of the legacy left behind for her by her father and her grandmother and her great-grandfather. In so many different ways, she has measured herself against them, and found herself wanting. She does not have the education, does not have the stature, does not have the strength of will or the fire of her spirit, to ever hope to be a true equal to them. What she has in common with them is the Silmaril that sits even now against her throat, its weight normally so comforting, but tonight only reminding her of all she has yet to lose. What she has in common with them is that death is coming to find her before her time, and Elwing cannot find a way to avoid it, just as Thingol could not avoid the treacherous Naugrim, just as Lúthien could not avoid the death she took onto herself when she agreed to be counted as a child of Men, just as Dior could not dodge Celegorm’s blade quickly enough. Death will find her eventually, and she will have no choice but to face it. Whether or not she can face it without sniveling or cringing like a coward, that is another matter.

She wants to believe that she can. Of course, no one ever wants to think that if death came for them, their reaction would be to debase themselves by asking for death to stay its hand. No one wants to believe that if someone came to kill them, they would debase themselves by promising anything and everything in exchange for some distant hope of having their life spared. Elwing does not want to believe that of herself more than anyone else would. But she never has been in such a situation, and when she knows in the darkness of the night, broken by red and by silver-white light, but not truly _lit up_ , that she will be facing it for the first time very soon, she cannot help but wonder.

A ragged, giddy laugh rattles behind Elwing’s teeth as she collapses back on her back on the bed, pressing her arm down over her eyes. When the Kinslayers come here, they will find another pair of twins to murder as they murdered her brothers, and though these twins will be a couple of years younger than the last, there is plenty of wild marshland to drag them off to in order to do the deed, just as Eluréd and Elurín were dragged off into the woods to be murdered. Elwing wonders bitterly what the Kinslayers will make of another pair of royal Iathrim twins. She wonders if they will take as much pleasure in murdering her sons as they no doubt did in murdering her brothers.

 _I think_ , she ponders wearily, _I think that I would fight tooth and nail to keep them from taking the Silmaril away from me while I yet lived. I would scratch and claw and bite at any hands that sought to rip the carcanet from my neck while I yet drew breath. It is_ mine _, and no one may take it from me, that calls themselves my enemy. All my power is bound up in it, all my heart is bound up in it, and if it is taken from me—_

Perhaps her death will not equal that of Dior’s. Perhaps she will not comport herself with the dignity expected of her thanks to her position, thanks to the blood that flows in her veins. But Elwing supposes that if she went down into death with the blood and skin of her enemies beneath her fingernails, that would at least be a death that could make it into a few songs. Perhaps she could render Maedhros one-eyed as well as one-handed. If something like that made it into a song, Elwing thinks she could be at least somewhat content with that.

-

It will not come to that, though. Elwing goes seeking out death in another fashion entirely, when the moment comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lindar** —‘Singers’; the clan name the Nelyar gave themselves (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. The Lindar (later known to outsiders as the Teleri) split into several groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Naugrim** —‘The Stunted People’ (Sindarin); a term used by the Sindar amongst themselves for the Dwarves; given its meaning and that they apparently didn’t use the name in front of the Dwarves, the term is likely a pejorative.  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Attempted suicide]

There will be many tales told of this, many songs sung, and most of the tales will be told and most of the songs sung by those who were not there that day, those who were never in Beleriand, those who dwelled always in the Undying Lands or who were not born into Ennor until after the Rodyn drowned Beleriand beneath the waves of the Sea. There will be many tales told of this day, and the vast majority of them will be told by those who have no real understanding of the geography of the land of which they speak.

There will be many tales told of this in the future, many songs sung, and in many of those tales and many of those songs, there will be a cliff that never existed.

No, the cliff never existed. There are no cliffs at the mouths of the Sirion. The lands dips sharply towards sea level the further west you go, until at last you meet the marsh in which the Lisgardh grows, and all of that land is perfectly level with the water, give or take two feet or so. There are no cliffs. There are no cliffs at all. To find cliffs, you would have to travel a good fifteen, even twenty miles either north or south, and even then, those cliffs would be short, abbreviated cliffs, with perhaps twenty feet between the plateau and the ground below.

Those who imagine cliffs do not understand Elwing, or perhaps, they simply do not wish to understand. Those who imagine cliffs want to imagine that it was a split-second decision, a decision born of impulse that could not be taken back once followed upon, and that it was over too quickly to reverse her course.

That is wrong.

It is understandable if you believe it at first, as that is what many of the tales will tell you, but it is wrong, and you do not know Elwing.

Behind her, the camp is burning, and Edhil are screaming. Some of the Iathrim and Gondolindrim have seen fit to fight back against their attackers, but many have just scattered out into the reeds, trying any way they can to avoid the death that has come for them. Elwing has taken advantage of all of the tumult, taken advantage of the small size of her body which has never before seemed like a blessing, taken advantage of her superior knowledge of the marshes and their narrow passageways and treacherous pitfalls to leave her pursuers struggling to follow her at even a fraction of her speed as she races to the shore. Elwing does not look back. Smoke is stinging in her nostrils, blood is stinging the roof of her mouth, and the specter of loss pierces her heart. She does not know who is following her, exactly, or even if anyone is. But she knows what is coming for her. She knows what will come for her, if she stands still long enough.

The day of reckoning has arrived, and Elwing has no intention of surrendering to her enemies.

There is no cliff. What Elwing has instead are waters that have promised her that she will come to no harm there but by her own hand and her own design. What Elwing has are waters that would reject the Kinslayers with furious anger if they so much as set foot in the shallows. What Elwing has is her own will.

There is no cliff. There is no singular choice, made in a split-second and then taken care of completely. There is Elwing walking into the water, her steps unencumbered at first, but increasingly laborious the further out she goes, and every step she makes is a choice. Every step she makes is a choice not to turn around, to hold on to what is hers even into the embrace of death, to meet death on her own terms instead of meeting it in on the terms of her family’s butchers, to spite the Kinslayers as best she knows how by forever denying them what they seek. Let them wander the shore in desolation, always seeking, and never finding. Let them be tormented by a distant gleam of light upon the starlit waters, never able to be certain if it is moonlight they see or the light of dead things contained within the Silmaril. Let the not-knowing torment them for all eternity, let their oaths unfulfilled torment them for all eternity. It is the least of what they deserve, after what they have done to her and hers.

There is no cliff. There is Elwing and the water, and every step is a choice, but the choice becomes harder to fulfill with each step she takes out past where the water starts to hit her chest, for here the currents grow stronger and each one wishes to buffet her so hard as to take her off of her feet entirely. She cannot let it do that, can _not_ let it do that—if she lets the currents wash her away, there is a chance, however small, that she might wash up back on shore, at the feet of the Kinslayers, their greedy, bloods-oaked hands ready to take what will never be theirs in truth. She must keep going, must keep her feet planted on the sand, must keep walking until she has hit the point of no return, until there is no going back and there is no chance of rescue, until the thieves can do nothing but wail and weep bitter tears into a Sea that loves them not at all.

The water continues to slosh up and up and up, until finally the water is over Elwing’s eyes, and her hair is fanning out all around her. Still, she keeps on walking, even after her feet leave the sand and she must paddle uselessly against water that has a will of its own and does not seem to know what to do with her at all. Still perceiving a risk of being washed up on shore, Elwing takes what little skill she has with swimming and dives down, down, _down_. Every force working on her wants to incline her body up, up, up, but her will is stronger than those forces. She pushes against the water, and continues her descent.

Her lungs are aching and the immense weight of the water feels as if it will crush her body to nothingness, very soon. The light of the Silmaril is diffused here, and Elwing can see clearly for only a few feet around her, before everything turns to a blue-gray murk that reveals nothing living, not close enough nearby for Elwing to ever hope to put a name to it. As the surface of the water grows further and further away, as Elwing becomes less certain of which way to swim would even take her towards that surface, where once there was a sharp, defiant certainty, there now churns a high, keening panic in her gut. She has not thought before what it is to die by drowning—this choice only became a real possibility to her when she realized that the Kinslayers were too large to follow her through the dense reeds with any ease—but she is trying to remember what sailors have whispered to her, and those tattered remnants of knowledge are pressing in on her like a vise.

Suddenly, she longs for escape, as she has never longed for it before. She has longed for an end to the war, of course, longed for an ending that does not spell her death, but _escape_ has never before factored into those distant, wild fantasies. She has longed for the war to end, with or without her death, both scenarios have played out in her mind before, she has longed for the war to end and a quiet stillness to seep across the land, but she has never before imagined getting away from it before it all could end. She has never imagined tearing out her roots and fleeing. She has always been the one who stays where she is. What is she supposed to—

Something unfurls in her mind, and here, from this, there will spread another fiction in the tales that are told of her, and this day, far into the future. There will spread a fiction, not quite a lie, for Elwing has never told anyone of this, never spoken to anyone of this day by her own will, and thus, many people have decided that they just have to draw their own conclusions, and the stories they hear are just as good a source as any to draw conclusions from, when the person who actually lived through all of this is not willing to fill the gaps in knowledge.

There will one day spread a fiction that Ulmo put a power in her body that changed her form to that of a birds. There will one day spread a fiction that Elwing only achieved this by a power put into her body by someone else. There will one day spread a fiction that without the intervention of the Rodyn, Elwing would have died in the waters of the Bay of Balar.

It makes for a good story, Elwing supposes. She would not know. She has heard the tales, of course; she can scarcely avoid them. But they have never spoken to her in a voice that she cares to hearken to. There is enough fiction in them to leave her confused when she hears them, for she listens to these tales, and at the first, she does not recognize them as an account, however abbreviated, of her life. She does not listen to them often. They only confuse her, when they do not anger her.

As with those who do not understand that she made choice after choice after choice to find herself so far beneath the surface of the water, those who believe that Ulmo put his power in her body, and only by those means could she change the shape of her body, they do not understand Elwing. They may have seen her, but they have never known her. She does not know if any of them would care to. There are plenty who seem not to.

She can feel her mind unfurling, can feel it stretching and spreading like a blanket pinned up on a line and left to flap and billow in the wind. Or… Or…

Or like the wings of a bird, perhaps.

It isn’t that Elwing can feel the knowledge coming to her. There is a moment where it is not in her mind, and then there is a moment where all of the knowledge is sitting proud in the midst of her mind like it has always been there, like it has always been lurking just out of the reach of her hand. It _has_ been, she realizes, just a moment after she realizes that the knowledge is there at all. The knowledge has been there—it is so natural to her own mind that it must have been locked away in the back of her mind her whole life—just waiting for her to notice it, just waiting for her reach to grow long enough for her fingernails to finally scrape against its borders.

She grasps the knowledge in both hands, and comprehends it, and for the first time for as long as she can remember, Elwing knows nothing resembling fear.

The last thought she has, before her body explodes in a burst of feathers and wings and beak and webbed feet, is how wondrous, how ecstatic, it is to experience such a total lack of fear, as to feel as if fear is nothing that has ever darkened the boundaries of her world.

-

There is an ecstasy in flight unlike any other. If you have never flown, if you have never beaten your wings and felt the air part around you, you can never know that ecstasy for yourself. If you have never flown, you have never known the ecstasy for yourself, and you never can. It is not something that can ever sing sweetly in your veins. It is not something that can fill your mind with its wonder, its pure, unadulterated bliss.

For a time, for a long time, Elwing is content to let that ecstasy sing in her veins, her strange and altered bird-veins, sing so long and so loud that it overtakes all thought, what few thoughts can be processed in a bird-mind. The ecstasy buoys her up for… She does not know how long. She will never know how long, exactly. Soaring so high up in the sky, surrounded by blue and white and wind, Elwing is not thinking about much of anything. She is not thinking about the way she is flying, or just what it is she seeks; she does not know that she _needs_ to be seeking _anything_. She is not thinking about what she left behind her, not the burning camp, not the people who looked to her always for guidance, for leadership and protection, not the broken ruin of the lost kingdom she was born to, not any of those who share her blood and hold claims upon her love. She is free of those burdens for the first time for as long as she can remember, and if going back down to the earth means tethering herself to them again, then Elwing wishes never to feel the ground beneath her feet again. Just… just let her soar, just let her fly endlessly in a sky that welcomes her like an old friend, just let her soar far, far, far away from everything that has ever gnawed on her without pause or mercy.

And for as long as she can, for as long as her wings will hold her up, Elwing does fly. There is such joy in it, after all, so much joy that she forgets every impulse that in her Edhel body would have seen her seeking her bed. She forgets the soreness of her limbs, forgets the gnawing in the pit of her stomach, forgets the vapors that begin to cloud her mind. It does not matter, does not matter, does not matter. As long as she’s up here, it does not matter.

But she has to grow tired eventually. Weariness has to start to work on Elwing eventually. Her body has to give out eventually.

She flies and flies and flies for as long as she can as her body grows heavier and her wings grow sorer and everything wants to work as it should less and less. Elwing flies for as long as she can, struggling to keep her eyes open, until she sees something out ahead of her on the surface of the water, something dark, something _solid_ that she can rest on while her body seeks out the sleep it has been denied for too long.

When she awakens, she knows that it will not be to the ecstasy of flight. She knows that the ground will have returned to her, and with it, its troubles will have found her again. But she hopes she sleeps for a long time. She hopes her dreams are of the sky. She thinks she could chase that sky for the rest of eternity, to have some of that bliss back in her veins.

-

Elwing’s dreams are not of the sky. Elwing’s dreams are not of anything resembling the sky. Elwing’s dreams have always been a little… a little _taxing_ , but the dreams that sink their claws into her open, vulnerable mind once sleep takes her unawares are unlike any she has ever experienced.

That is not a small thing to claim. Elwing has experienced a wide range of dreams, from the pleasant—even with a life like hers, pleasant dreams haven ever been entirely out of the question, for dreams are what the mind conjures, and sometimes her mind does conjure pleasant fantasies, as well as specters fit to haunt her at all hours—to the… to the decidedly _not_ pleasant. To the not just ‘decidedly not pleasant,’ but to the abjectly terrifying. To the sorts of dreams that Elwing will never wish to recount, no matter how long she might live and how many years of distance she might be able to put between herself and those dreams.

It is… It’s a kaleidoscope of sensations, of strange patterns of color and sound, of faces she thinks she might recognize, but distorted as if seen through several feet of water. Every time Elwing thinks she has one in her grasp, it slips away, like sand falling through her fingers. She learns quickly enough not to try and grasp them at all. The dream is somewhat easier to cope with, that way.

They start off slow, at first, but then they begin to whirl around her, faster and faster until it spins like a top set to spin on a table and Elwing feels sick just from watching it all, for she cannot shut her eyes in here, cannot turn her gaze away from the endlessly-shifting panorama, can only stand and watch, can only drink it all in, and try to ignore the way drinking it all in starts to make her choke.

After a while, Elwing begins to think that she is being shown… the world, she thinks. There is no explanation that would ever make sense, not completely, but this one comes a little closer than the rest. She is shown such a vast array of images, some of faces, some of landscapes, some of buildings, given such a vast of sounds to contend with, cries and scream and laughter and whispers that go by too quickly to be positively identified as words, but certainly _could_ be, that it certainly _feels_ as if this could encompass all the world.

She does not know why she is being shown all of this, but then, who ever knows why they are dreaming the way they do? That she knows that she is dreaming is surprise enough, for that is a rarity for Elwing. Typically, when Elwing dreams, her dreams are so intense and consuming that she does indeed think them to be waking hours and waking experiences, and so caught up is she in them that she never realizes that what she was experiencing wasn’t real until she jolts awake in her bed.

But these are totally lucid. Well… The images are not what she would call lucid, let alone the sounds, but her mind is completely lucid, her mind is well aware of the fact that she is dreaming. That she is so aware of the fact that she is dreaming is perhaps the reason she regards this all as a simple dream, rather than a nightmare. That she is so aware of the fact that she is dreaming is likely the only reason why she is able to bear it at all.

She wonders what it is that triggered this dream in particular, what it is that has led her to the point of watching all the world revolve around her in a flash. Likely, she will never know. She might be aware of the fact that this is a dream, but a dream is still a dream, and dreams rarely make any sense to the dreamer. Most likely, this will never make any sense to her.

Still, she feels something like loss as the images pass her by, over and over—some of them are repeating. Like the lack of knowledge could hurt her, if she continues on in such a state. But alone of everything Elwing has encountered, dreams have never hurt her. She thinks that her mind must simply be traveling to strange places, after her body saw fit to do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Rodyn—** Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : obsession; paranoia; trauma; child abandonment; mentions of food insecurity; implied magical compulsion]

Elwing does not awaken all at once. Given how long she had been awake before the start of her last sleep, given how troubled her sleep has been for the months leading up to the attack, that is to be expected. Even Elwing, later on, will admit to herself that it comes as no surprise. Her body has been too long abused by wakefulness to surrender to it again gladly.

Elwing does not awaken all at once. There first comes the realization that she is no longer dreaming, that her mind had returned to wakefulness, but her eyes will not open and her body is so heavy and sore, and really, she does not care to move, even to the small extent of letting her eyelids flutter open. That is just as well. So newly returned from the land of sleep, Elwing is not certain that she could have opened her eyes at all.

She does not know how long her body lies wherever it lies before she begins in some small way to become aware of her surroundings. A rough, heavy cloth lies over her body, and beneath her is something no softer, something that ways gently in the rock of what… No, that must be the Sea that makes the thing sway, and what makes the thing it is attached to rock. Some hearing has returned to Elwing, and she thinks she can hear water, thinks she can hear a very familiar song.

A ship, then. The mind is awake, even if the body yet clings to sleep in any fashion it can manage, with desperate fingertips sinking deep into sleep’s flesh. For such circumstances to be true, Elwing must be on a ship.

She ought to be more alarmed by that. The mind is not as awake as Elwing thinks it is, and thus, her alarm at awakening in a ship that could be going anywhere, could be crewed by anyone, is not nearly as acute as it ought to be. Forget it lacking the acuteness it truly requires—it barely even exists, being only a feeble, drifting voice on the very boundaries of her mind, so quiet that a gentle breeze upon the hull could have been more clearly audible.

But she is on a ship, regardless of how she feels, and thus, some of the mystery of where she landed has been resolved.

Landed…

At last, Elwing finds the strength to peel open her leaden eyelids. She is lying flat on her back, staring up at planks of dark wood. Elwing has never been on a ship actively sailing on the Sea before, but she has inspected a few, in her time, and this looks much like she would have expected. At least her senses do not deceive. Landed…

Elwing presses in on her mind, searching for the formula that could let her take a bird shape once more. She finds it easily enough, but she finds she can’t do anything with it. Even the slightest exertion in that direction leaves every muscle in her body screaming as if set ablaze, so much so that for a moment, Elwing wonders if that is actually what happened. If she landed on a ship crewed by very suspicious Men, perhaps…

That notion is soon discarded, though. Smell has returned, and though Elwing can discern a plethora of smells, few of them pleasant, burned flesh is not present among them. Perhaps some harm has befallen her body that she cannot be aware of, so newly returned to wakefulness, but burning is not among the possibilities. Whoever’s ship she landed on, it’s not someone so put off by the sight of a bird turning into a woman once unconscious that assault or murder would be their first resort to deal with such a sight.

Landed. Elwing heaves a long, harsh sigh. She has come back down to earth, alright, and even if she is in a ship that floats upon the surface of the Sea, that is still very much ‘earth’ compared to what she was with weariness forced to leave behind. So. She has come back down to earth, and come back down to everything she left behind when she took wing for the first time in her life (The first of many occasions, she hopes, but first, she has to make it out of whatever situation she is in alive and whole, and that might well be easier said than done).

For the second time in her life, Elwing has fled the ruins of her lost kingdom. Oh, the camp in the Lisgardh was not much of a kingdom, and Elwing was not much of a queen, and she would have given it all up in a heartbeat to be Princess Elwing of Doriath, rather than Queen Elwing of the Lisgardh, for to be princess and not queen would at least have meant that she had enough of her family left that there was someone else left to rule, rather than her. She would have given the Lisgardh up in a heartbeat to live in a world where she could be a princess and not a queen, and perhaps that makes her a poor ruler—Elwing would not be surprised at all to learn that that makes her a poor ruler, though the pronouncement would no doubt have been redundant, considering her youth, considering the fact that her education could never be what her father’s had been, what her brothers’ would have been had Doriath persisted and her brothers survived past the tender age of seven, considering her temperament, considering the world they were forced to inhabit, considering she has _lost_ the camp she ruled over and can never get it back.

She has escaped with her life. That much is true. Elwing has escaped with her life from those who no doubt wished to end it, from those who no doubt wished to kill her as they killed her mother, her father, her older brothers. She can take some satisfaction in that, knowing that the Kinslayers, if yet they live, must go away from the site of their latest butchery with blood dripping from their boot heels, but yet unsatisfied. (She would be overjoyed beyond all reason to learn that all four who remain are dead, that their accursed line can plague the earth no longer and the Edhil can live without fear of these beasts falling upon them as they have fallen upon the Lindar, upon the Iathrim, upon the Gondolindrim, but their prowess in battle is great, and Maedhros’s greatest of all, and Elwing does not think it terribly likely. She is not that lucky.)

She has escaped with her life, but she has lost it all in the process. The camp in the Lisgardh was but a fractured fragment of what once was the mightiest kingdom in Ennor, but even a fractured fragment was more precious to Elwing than any land of the Exiles, however much they might claim its superiority. Oh, when Elwing was assailed by black moods, and she was assailed by them often, she could not always see its preciousness, but even at her most melancholic, she had cared enough for it to try to beautify it, to try to make it somewhat more pleasant of a place for her people to live in—and the Gondolindrim as well, though had Elwing been an adult when they made their way into the Lisgardh, she is not entirely certain that she would have granted them access. (In the months that passed in between the first letter and the attack, there was much speculation on how it was that the Kinslayers had discovered the location of the camp in the first place. There are those who think that the rumors just spread out naturally, and that it was inevitable that the Kinslayers would have fallen upon them, eventually. This is not an opinion universally held, however. There are some among the Iathrim who immediately or eventually began to look askance upon the Gondolindrim, and the whispers that traveled through the camp of how the Kinslayers found them quickly turned nasty. Elwing… is not certain of what to believe, honestly. She does not want to believe that that it was by her own works that the camp became known to the wider world, became known to their enemies. She does not want to believe that she can carry any of the blame for the Kinslayers finding them. But the idea of having nurtured vipers at her breast all this time, that even those Exiles who are not Kinslayers eventually turned treacherous against her and hers, that does not appeal, either. She is not always willing to put it past them, but she does not wish to believe that she could really have been so blind. She does not want to think that she married the prince of a treacherous people.)

She has escaped with her life, but she has lost it all in the process, and she has nothing with which to try and carry on even the most meager fragment of the kingdom her father and great-grandfather made so great and so glorious. She’s lost it all.

Well, not quite all.

Elwing heaves another sigh, this one rather less harsh than the last. She has lost it all, except for one thing. She has successfully carried out of the Lisgardh the greatest prize she knows, and kept it in the hands of those who would not use it for ill, even if ‘ill’ is encompassed by wearing it and showing it off when blood-soaked hands would only stain it and mar it with their own wickedness.

She’s lost it all, but for one thing, and if Elwing had to pick something to salvage from the broken ruins of her lost kingdom, the Silmaril is certainly what she prefers. At least with the Silmaril, she can have the comfort of its song, whispering sweetly in her ears. Some consolation for her loss, she hopes.

With some effort, Elwing lifts her hand to her throat, already soothed somewhat by the prospect of tracing the outlines of the jewel and the carcanet in which it sits. Her limbs are so heavy, her bones feeling for all the world as though whatever materials make them up have been replaced with lead and pewter and whichever miserably heavy materials whoever was replacing them could lay hands on. Her limbs feel hideously heavy, and her hand is no different, but eventually, she is able to make it work well enough to lift up her hand, and bring it as gently as a heavy, clumsy hand can manage, to her neck.

And every bit of calm and hoped-for comfort flees her when Elwing realizes for the first time that her neck is bare.

Elwing had not woken up all at once, when she was first dragged from the rest of sleep—how truly restful her dreams had been was debatable, but there was no denying that any amount of sleep was better than the nothing she had endured in the days leading up to the attack—but the last of sleep flees all at once in the face of the panic and the _fury_ that erupts in Elwing upon realizing that the Silmaril is gone. That panic and that fury flood her body with a strength that she has rarely known. When she took flight for the first time—and the joy of flight is totally forgotten in the face of _this_ —she felt something like it, but nothing can compare to the strength that fills you when you realize that something you cherish so is _gone_ , _nothing_ can compare to a strength born of utter, consuming panic. Nothing…

Lost? Perhaps it slipped off of her neck when she was in the water. The clasp is part of the masterwork of the most skilled craftsmen in all of Ennor, but those craftsmen were treacherous, as well, and Elwing would not put it past them to have designed the clasp to come undone when it was least convenient for the wearer, if that wearer happens to be an Edhel. The carcanet could have slipped off of Elwing’s neck when she was in the water, or it could have gone flying off _when_ she went flying away, for as slender as Elwing’s neck might be, her neck in bird form is more slender, still.

But Elwing cannot believe that. She cannot believe that she would not have noticed. She cannot believe that she would not have gone scrambling after the Silmaril, if it fell from her body. Elwing knows herself well enough to know better than to believe otherwise of herself.

So. Stolen.

All the worries she should have felt when she realized she had landed on a ship, crew and destination both entirely unknown to her, have crashed down on Elwing all at once. In an instant, she is out of her resting place—a hammock, though she barely notices—eyes darting around the small hold where she was put (imprisoned?!) as she tries to calm her frantic mind enough to decide what to do first. This looks like living quarters of some sort. If whoever stole the Silmaril from Elwing’s prone neck is exceptionally foolish, does not understand the true value of what they took (that seems unlikely to Elwing; she would be shocked if there is a single person living in Beleriand, and well outside of it as well, who does not know well enough of the Silmarils to know one when they see one, not when all of Beleriand knows what its war is being waged over), or perhaps holds both traits, it is possible that her most cherished, her most beloved, her most needed is somewhere in this room with her, somewhere waiting for her to find it and don it once more.

If she could just tear apart this space and find the Silmaril within it, without needing to go out among the wider area of the ship, Elwing has no doubt that the Silmaril’s song returned to her ears would give her enough of herself back that she could assume bird shape and fly away at once, that she could fly away quickly enough to evade any arrows slung her way. After the long sleep she has enjoyed, no doubt she could fly for long enough without any need of rest to find the shore once more, find the land once more, no matter how far out at Sea she might be.

But it is not that simple. It cannot be that simple. Elwing does not have luck enough to count on the Silmaril having been left in this dimly-lit hold, jumbled with hammocks and chests and crates and a thousand other bits of clutter that could serve as hiding places for a thousand bits of treasure. She does not have luck enough for all to go as she wishes it to, and thus, it must be that whoever stole the Silmaril from her has taken it out of this space. She hopes, hopes, hopes, _hopes_ that it is still on the ship, that they are not docked and her treasure has not been taken ashore to be sold or bartered or delivered to the nearest bandit leader pretending at being a warlord, but if that is true, if the Silmaril is still on the ship, where does that leave her?

Really, where does that leave her? Elwing is no warrior, and even at the best of times, there is not strength enough in her arms to make good use of a sword; her panic-stricken, furious energy would no doubt fail her if it came to an actual confrontation. She cannot hope to overpower the thief and reclaim what is hers, and anyone who has the slightest idea of the value of what they hold would be wary of someone else stealing what they themselves won by theft. The only way Elwing can hope to reclaim the Silmaril is by guile, but she has never been blessed by an overabundance of guilt, either. What she has had is her duty, and the knowledge and the certainty that she must carry her duty out. Those who taught her sought to instill and foster in her knowledge and wisdom, not guile. Princess Elwing of Doriath would have had the leisure to develop guile, but Queen Elwing of the Lisgardh has never known leisure, not for so much as an hour. Queen Elwing of the Lisgardh has known hunger without end, and it is difficult to cultivate guile with hunger always seeking to unravel the fabrics of your mind.

Elwing is still frantically running over her options, repeating herself over and over, trying to tease out anything she might have missed but never finding anything that could hearten her, when she hears footsteps above. Her heart hammers in her chest so fast she feels as if it might burst, or else just jump out of her mouth and begin screaming in place of her silence. Elwing’s eyes dart over the hold, looking for anything she could use as a weapon; the closest she sees to such is a broom, and she does not think she could wield it any more expertly than a sword.

At any rate, the broom is on the other side of the hold from her, and Elwing cannot reach it before the door is swinging open, and blinding sunlight is flooding into the hold, momentarily rendering Elwing totally incapable of making out just who it is who has confronted her.

It takes a few moments longer before her eyes can adjust. Her ears, however, need no such amount of time to understand what it means when she hears a familiar voice call out “Elwing!”

Eärendil.

For a moment, an agonizingly, treacherously long moment, Elwing’s panic is tempered by relief. Eärendil is here. Surely, Eärendil will help her recover what she has lost, or has been stolen from her (must be stolen, must be stolen, but when she tells him, surely he will help her put things to rights), surely now that she has her husband at her side—a duty he has neglected for nearly all of the time that they have been married, but surely upon hearing what has become of the camp, he will cleave more closely to her side—she will be able to set things to right and reclaim what is hers more easily. Surely, he would not—

Elwing’s eyes catch up with her ears. All of her relief flees her at once.

Eärendil’s neck is bare. His brow is not.

Elwing has wondered for months if, in allowing the Gondolindrim to remain in the Lisgardh, she has not nurtured vipers at her breast. She had never once thought that she might have been nursing a viper at her breast in the form of her _husband_.

Eärendil is not thinking about vipers nurtured at breasts, or not thinking about anything at all, or else he is so far from being the man Elwing thought he was that calling him a stranger would be too mild a term to describe what he has become to her, for he rushes forward without another word and in a moment, he is there right in front of her, pulling her into his arms and a tight embrace that Elwing wants to scream and fight and bite against, but she cannot find the will to do anything but hang limply in his arms and listen as words rush forth from his mouth again like water spilling from a waterfall to the rocks below.

It’s… Elwing wants it to be galling. He’s _stolen_ from her, and now he stands before her with these words spilling out of his mouth, now he stands before her stumbling all over himself trying to express himself with how _relieved_ he is that she has awoken, how shocked he was to see a large white swan flying towards his ship bearing the Silmaril on its breast, he had never known that Elwing could do something like that, why hadn’t she told him she could do something like that, why is she here, what’s happened to the camp, what’s happened to _her_ …

She wants it to be galling. She wants to believe with wholehearted certainty that this is just some sort of ploy, that this man she thought she knew but actually has never known at all has stolen from her and is now feigning concern as an attempt to lull her into a false sense of security, or something like that. Elwing does not suffer thieves gladly. She should not suffer this one gladly.

And yet, she’s shaking, and her body is sinking into Eärendil’s embrace of its own accord, and she wants to stay in that embrace and never have to open her eyes on the expanse of the world again. She cannot hear the Silmaril singing from its wrongful place on Eärendil’s brow, but she can feel its light upon her, and that is not as it should be, not by itself, but hanging there in his embrace, breathing in the smell of him and reveling in his warmth, it’s too easy, _entirely_ too easy, to become again the woman who was happy to be married to him, the woman who was happy at the thought of spending the rest of eternity as his wife. Those memories are so distant now, so very distant that they feel more like a half-remembered dream than anything that ever happened in Elwing’s waking life, but the sensations of it come back to her in an instant, whenever she is put in the situation to experience them. Her body remembers, even if the mind would prefer to forget.

He’s stolen from her.

She’s missed him.

Elwing finds not putting her arms around him the only compromise she is capable of. Her body is betraying her as much as her body can, and she takes this limpness as the best compromise she is capable of. In a few moments, they will speak of this. In a few moments. Maybe. Perhaps. Elwing is so tired, and she can smell smoke in her nostrils even though there are no fires burning nearby, can smell blood in her nostrils even though no one is bleeding. She would like to have this, if just for a little while.

-

They talk. They talk, and they talk, and they talk, and they manage to talk around the subject of just how Elwing wound up here. Little things, like the tides and how they have affected life in the Lisgardh. Little things, like how the seasons have turned, how the winters have grown harsher and the summers bleaker. Little things, like how Elwing’s hair is longer than Eärendil remembers it being. Little things, like how Eärendil’s skin is more heavily freckled than Elwing remembers. Little things, like the patterns the stars make on the waters at night. Little things, like the cries of birds as they fly overhead.

Those little things, oh, those little things, Elwing lets them fill her up like stuffing her body full of wool. When she lets them fill her up, they cover up so many things, even if the cover is paltry and threadbare and the thing it hides is at some points visible underneath. When she lets them fill her up, there are a few moments when she can forget.

She cannot forget forever, and they cannot speak of little things forever. Elwing and Eärendil have not had a whole lot in their lives, not since they fled the ruins of their lost kingdoms, and there is not so much for them to talk about as all that. Most of what they have to talk about concerns their lives intensely. They cannot hope to put off speaking of their lives forever.

It’s…

Do you know, it wasn’t actually all that hard to live through? Elwing’s emotions were not working as they ought when it was actually happening. There were _some_ emotions, certainly. If Elwing did not feel anything at all, she does not think it would have occurred to her to run as she had. If Elwing did not feel anything at all, she does not think she would have walked into the Sea. Her emotions are there— _were_ there, even then—but they’ve gotten buried, and they are difficult to unearth.

Difficult to unearth, and once they have been unearthed, difficult to put back into the earth. It was not nearly as difficult just to live through it, as it is to recount it. When Elwing recounts it, she is not only thinking back on what she experienced, as narrowed and focused on her own survival as her own experiences had been, but she is seeing the horror of it all reflected in the horror fulminating in Eärendil’s eyes. Elwing does not know why, but the horror she sees in Eärendil’s eyes is more terrible to her than the horror she experienced firsthand.

Or perhaps it is that the horror she sees reflected in the eyes of one who knows of what became of the camp in the Lisgardh only through the stories told to him by a survivor is finally awakening within her what she thought dead or never-born, but was in fact only sleeping. Elwing does not know. Elwing cannot say. Elwing is busy contending with her churning stomach, busy beating back the slowly mounting ache of nausea that has chosen now, this moment of all moments, to come up upon her and try to wrest control of her body away from her. When she is struggling to falteringly convey to Eärendil just what it is that happened to their home, when she’s struggling to sort out everything that she is feeling or should be feeling or is not feeling, she does not want to deal with nausea on top of all of that. Not for a single moment.

Elwing tells Eärendil what happened, tells him about the letters and the uncertainty and the eventual attack, and still, there is something they are dancing around. Still, there is something that neither of them wish to touch upon, for various reasons. There is something that neither of them want to make into a concrete reality, by speaking it aloud in the free and open air.

They are racing towards that conclusion, anyways.

It is Eärendil who broaches the subject first. He draws a deep, ragged breath (a wet breath, though all breaths must be wet in air so impregnated with saltwater), squeezes his eyes shut, and yet, he is the one who speaks of it first. He is the one who can drag the words up out of his chest first. If that is supposed to be some sort of commentary on strength, Elwing does not think she cares for how it reflects upon hers. “And…” Eärendil seems to sway a little where he’s sitting, but in a moment, Elwing can see that it’s down to the way the ship bobs in the water. “And the children?”

“They’re dead,” Elwing tells him flatly.

His eyes shoot open. “You saw them?”

She shakes her head. “No. But they’re dead. And I do not wish to look upon their corpses.”

Everyone around her tried to keep it from her as best she could, always tried to keep it from her as best they could, but Elwing’s ears do work as they should, and she has always made it her business to listen to what people around her are saying, if they speak it within earshot. She has understood a long time the danger of going about her life without listening.

There are those who whisper of her brothers. It was inevitable that they would. Plenty of people in the last several hundred years have died without leaving a body behind—that is the nature of war. Plenty of people in the last several hundred years have died without leaving any sort of body behind that could be identified by loved ones and laid to rest in proper fashion, instead of being piled up in a mound with others until the bodies provide the foundations of the only patch of green earth in all of the Anfauglith. And when those people are not those who led armies into battle, when those people are not those who called themselves ‘prince’ or ‘king’, that they have died without leaving a body behind that people can find and identify and lay to rest passes without much comment. When it happens to the common man, no one comments upon it, except perhaps that common man’s family, if they have left any family behind them at all.

When it is someone who is styled ‘prince’ or ‘king’, that is another matter entirely.

Here, we must look to the Exiles. Aegnor and Angrod perished in the flames of the Dagor Bragollach, bodies totally obliterated, and there were rumors for years afterwards that they who had been reported dead yet lived. Rebellion against the Enemy in the region that these brothers had ruled for a time rallied around these two princes, men who had been reckoned living and were yet dead. Elwing has heard tales of how the majority of those rebellions collapsed into nothingness when the rebels realized that Angrod and Aegnor was dead, until the only band of rebels that remained was the one led by Barahir, her own ancestor.

There were many who bore witness to Fingon’s broken body being trampled underfoot by the Balrogs, but there were none who were able to rush forward and retrieve his body. Eagles were at least able to save Fingolfin’s body from being defiled, but his firstborn son was not so lucky, and it is likely that Fingon’s final resting place is either the quagmire he was trampled into, or whatever refuse heap in Angband he was dragged back to after his spirit fled his broken body. But still, there are whispers. There are whispers that Fingon is not dead, but sleeping, and that he will eventually awaken, and join the fight once more, leading the Exiles to victory over their foes. He never will, but still, there are people who whisper of it, who long for the day when their dead king defies all the edicts of the Rodyn and returns to them. (He won’t. He is an Exile, and a Kinslayer, and accursed. If Fingon was released from the Houses of the Dead before the likes of Elwing’s mother, Elwing thinks there might be a moment when she would be tempted to send him right back from whence he came.)

And how many tales have been told of Fëanor’s fiery ghost? His body disintegrated before the eyes of his blood-soaked sons, and there is no tomb in all the world that holds the body of the chief Kinslayer. Fëanor’s name was spoken in Doriath, and in the Lisgardh, as well, though he was not spoken of as a prince or a commander or, for the most part, even as a Kinslayer. No, how Elwing has heard Fëanor spoken of is thus: “Be good, my child, or else Fëanor will appear to you in the night as a pillar of flame, and drag you off to the Houses of the Dead.”

These whispers, these superstitious tales, they feature the Exiles, mostly. The Exiles are so over-dramatic that that is only to be expected. But the whispers are not restricted solely to the Exiles. Not when the world has so many diverse peoples from which to draw such rumors.

And her brothers, oh, her brothers, they have been the center of so many rumors in the decades since their deaths. Why would they not be? Elwing wonders bitterly, _oh_ , why would they _not_ be? It makes for such an _entertaining_ tale, does it not? Two seven-year-old boys dragged out into the deepest, densest woods of Doriath on a winter’s night, their bodies never found by any who searched for them. Oh, does that not just make for a _fascinating_ basis on which to center tales?

There are whispers that Elurín and Eluréd were spirited away to Ossiriand, rumors that they were taken to the Taur-im-Duinath, wild tales that they were recovered by the Onodrim and that they dwell in Doriath even now, sprouting leaves and tree branches and roots, boasting wood specks on their skin like freckles or scales, totally unrecognizable to any who knew them as children. Those are just the tales that Elwing has heard, listening to what no one has ever meant for her to overhear. There are others. She knows there are others. Such tales as this, the basis has a thousand permutations that will mutate the moment you look at them. There must be more versions, must be _so_ many more that Elwing has simply never heard before.

Elwing…

Elwing knows that her family is the subject of many tales and songs. She could hardly have failed to _notice_ , considering how many times she has listened to those tales and songs told to her in general, and the long, convoluted tale of her grandparents’ marriage and the trials they had to go through to attain her great-grandfather’s approval and convince him not to kill his son-in-law in particular. She has endured it. She cannot say that she _loves_ it, nor that she even particularly _likes_ it, but she has endured it, for she knows the world will not stop, no matter how she in particular feels about it. Elwing has no doubt that there are those who would even tell her that she should not be so ungrateful to hear songs sung of her family, for how would she have known of them otherwise?

But as it stands, Elwing’s attitude towards the public consumption of her family’s lives is one of endurance. She listens to them to remind herself of all of the examples she must try to live up to, even as she knows that she never can. She listens to them to know all of the things she might have been able to be, if her potential had ever become something to be proud of, instead of something she can only regret. She allowed others in the camp to listen to those songs and those tales because the two both seemed to bring them comfort, and even if Elwing can find no comfort in them whatsoever, if they are things that can help others who must share this world with her sleep a little more easily at night, then she must in good conscience allow them to go on. Herself, Elwing has learned to, if not shut her ears—she can never shut her ears, not completely, not when what she isn’t hearing could be the thing that deals her a hurt she might never recover from—not listen to those songs and those tales when they are being told. Or, rather, she listens just enough to know when to give the appropriate response at the appropriate moment, and no more than that. Elwing already knows how inadequate she is compared to those who came before her. She does not care to be reminded of that fact, not over and over and over again.

It is one thing to listen to tales of those who managed to live out their lives. Even if their lives were all cut brutally short, or they were like Beren and they were always going to live a brutally short life, no matter what happened, at least Dior and Nimloth, Lúthien and Beren, Thingol and Melian managed to live out _lives_. At least they were able to realize their potential. At least they were able to do something with their lives, experience the sort of experiences most agree are essential to living a full, fulfilled sort of life.

Eluréd and Elurín are something else entirely. They were _seven years old_ when the Kinslayers came to call upon Menegroth, seven years old when Celegorm’s servants dragged them kicking and screaming out into the wintry wilds, seven years old when they met whatever fate those cruel servants, every bit as cruel as their master no doubt would have been had he found the boys instead, put them to, a fate that Elwing cannot imagine did not end in death. All they were was potential. They never had the chance to carry any of that potential out.

Elwing does not wish to imagine them alive, because she does not wish to imagine that her brothers would live out their lives wherever it is they live in hiding, knowing that she still lives, knowing that she struggles to lead what little remains of their people, that she toils in the Lisgardh, always hungry, never content or comforted, and that she is alone, with none of her family about her. She does not want to believe that her brothers live, because she does not want to believe that they would have abandoned her like this. She does not want to believe that she means so little to them.

And she does not want to torment herself, either, with the constant agony of not knowing. There are some who would say that to believe her brothers alive would be to exercise hope, but Elwing sees it as something closer to a form of self-mutilation, if you can mutilate your own heart without ever touching it. To go on believing that her brothers could still be alive, just because she has never laid eyes upon their bodies, that is something that would never allow her to live in the present. Elwing does not feel as if she lives fully in the present, not really—she is bound by her ghosts, all of them, and that keeps her bound at least in part in the past—but there is a part of her that must live in the present, in order to carry out her duties as she has. (As she has failed to do well enough to stave off destruction, but please, she does not wish to think on that.) To spend her life believing that her brothers could be alive would see her chasing after ghosts all the day long. Elwing knows herself, and she knows herself well enough to know that if she had ever given heed to any of the wild tales that circulate regarding her brothers’ potential survival, she could have counted the time it would take for her to become consumed by them in hours, rather than years or months or even days.

Here is the truth: Eluréd and Elurín are dead. The Kinslayers came to Menegroth and slew them. None of the Sons of Fëanor might have laid hands on them personally, but the servants of one must be as cruel and as wicked as their master, and presented with two helpless children after it became clear that they would not be walking away from the slaughter with their longed-for prize, Elwing has no doubt that they slew them. Why would they not, men like them?

If they would slay Elwing’s brothers, in spite of the clear value they would have had as hostages they would certainly do the same to Elwing’s sons. Her sons are not alive. Elwing will not allow herself to hope that they might be. Hope will not serve her well. Hope will only lead her straight into the clutches of her enemies, to either be murdered, or watch as the Silmaril is stolen from her and passed into the hands of they who deserve possession of it about as much as Morgoth himself.

Their sons are dead. It will serve them nothing well to go searching for their corpses. Elwing understands that. Eärendil must be made to understand that, as well.

And it does not take too much more for Elwing to make him understand that. Eärendil has not had to deal with the same agony of having older siblings whose bodies were never accounted for, has never had to deal with the agony of growing up hearing stories about how they _must_ be alive somewhere, in spite of everything pointing in another direction entirely. Eärendil has never been forced to contend with that sort of agony, but he has grown up in the Lisgardh as well, and he was often at Elwing’s side as they both sped along towards adulthood. He knows the realities of this world.

So.

 _So_.

Elwing has never once contemplated the idea of joining Eärendil on his voyages. She has never contemplated it, for as long as her duty bound her to the shore, she could never countenance such a thing. Eärendil knows her well, Eärendil knows this part of her heart, and thus, Eärendil has never asked. Just as she has never tried to keep him from the Sea, even though his place ought to be at her side, he has never asked her to leave the shore behind her, for her people were on the shore, and not at Sea.

Elwing has never once contemplated the idea of going to Sea, as her husband has gone to Sea. It is not a fantasy that she has ever allowed herself. When she has regarded the Sea as a victorious rival, she’s not cared to give it this additional victory, not cared to give it the victory of putting herself in its power in such a way. Why should she give the Sea yet more to gloat about, when it has already taken her husband? But even apart from that, Elwing has not dared contemplate a life upon the Sea. She has had her duties, she has had so many different things binding her to the shore, and the bonds are so tight and so sturdy that if Elwing tried to board a ship and sail away, they’d start tugging on her in no time, and they would never allow her to get out of sight of the Lisgardh. It’s just impossible.

Well, all of the bonds have now snapped. They’ve all been severed with the edge of a sword, and Elwing no longer has anything binding her to anything. For the first time, she can do what she wants, and honestly…

Honestly, Elwing does not know how she feels about this freedom. It feels, yes, as if her bonds have been severed, but that does not feel like something particularly worth celebrating, not wholeheartedly. Her bonds are broken, and now, they feel not only like what was binding her to the Lisgardh, binding her to the shore, but things that were binding her to the _earth_ , at all. Now those bonds are broken, and Elwing feels like she might go soaring away from the earth, never able to regain enough control to come back down to earth again.

 _But I can fly, now. I have wings, now. I can choose to return to the earth at any moment that is acceptable to me_.

That… that helps, a little bit. It helps to make a little easier to contemplate her life as it is now. It’s not the thing to erase all doubts, forever, but it does help.

So.

 _So_.

Elwing is now at Sea. She sees nothing else that she can do. She cannot return to the Lisgardh, for even if the Kinslayers are not lying in wait for her there, she will no doubt find the camp deserted—any survivors (if there are any survivors) will have fled, likely to the Isle of Balar. She cannot go seeking out what little remnant there might be of her people, for after all that has happened, she cannot imagine that they would accept her back. The Kinslayers came seeking the Silmaril, and perhaps what little remains now of the Iathrim might rather not invite another attack. Elwing does have that feeling—the Iathrim will not accept the Silmaril, no matter how much it has done for them, and Elwing will not part with it. (Here, she looks askance at her husband’s brow once more.) She cannot return to them.

Out to Sea, Elwing goes. Perhaps, after long enough, she will finally be able to understand why Eärendil loves it so.

-

In the dark of the night, when they are curled up in the same hammock, the other mariners fast asleep all around them, asides from the one who stands on the deck, watching for freak waves or what-have-you, that is when Elwing finally manages to bring it up to him.

“This is mine,” she whispers, brushing her fingers against the carcanet. She cannot bear to touch the Silmaril itself, not when it has been bound to flesh it ought not to have been. “This is mine, Eärendil. Give it back to me.”

Eärendil blinks blankly up at her, his mouth working for a moment in silence before he says blearily, “But it called to me. When you fell onto the ship, it called to me. It beckoned for me to take it, and wear it. I think it belongs to me now, love.”

And with that, he shuts his eyes and goes back to sleep, completely oblivious to Elwing still staring down at him, white-lipped.

Later, Elwing will never be able to say with certainty just how long it is that she remains sitting up, staring down at Eärendil’s oblivious, sleeping face. She has no small experience of stillness, and knows well how time can distort in stillness. Others might say that she ought to have lied down and tried to sleep, but really, what is she supposed to do when he says something like _that_ to her?

He… he thinks it belongs to _him_ , now? Eärendil thinks that this heirloom of the royal house of Doriath, worn by Elwing and Dior, worn by Lúthien, held precious in the treasure vaults of Elu Thingol, can just become his as easily as all that? Eärendil thinks it can become his at all? An heirloom of Doriath, and a son of Gondolin thinks he has any right to it at all?

It would be… It would be so easy to just take the carcanet from his brow, and place it back around her neck, where it belongs. Easier than it must have been for Eärendil to steal it from Elwing’s sleeping neck in the first place, for Elwing will only need to slide the carcanet off of his head, rather than unclasp it to remove it. Just do it carefully, just be quick about putting it back on, and Elwing will have her treasure back, safe and sound.

It would be so easy, but it will not be simple. Eärendil thinks, however _wrongly_ , that the Silmaril is his, now. He thinks that what he won by theft from his vulnerable wife belongs to him, and with that wrong-headed certainty will undoubtedly arise complications, once he realizes that its rightful owner has taken it back.

Here, Elwing’s mind treads paths she does not care to contemplate, but if she wants the full measure of the situation she finds herself in, she must contemplate them, she _must_. Elwing… cannot hope to _keep_ her treasure, in such a situation as this. She cannot prevail over Eärendil in strength of arms, and the men on this ship are undoubtedly loyal to him well before they are loyal to her. If she takes back what is hers, it will only be stolen from her again, and she does not want to believe that any harm would come to her at Eärendil’s hands, she does _not_ want to believe that, but Fëanor and his sons have provided a stark enough example of the lengths people will go to to in order to reclaim the Silmaril, once they have become more enamored of it than is wise. She must be wiser about how she goes about this than to impulsively take the carcanet from her husband’s sleeping brow, and expect that to be the end of it.

 _I could assume bird form,_ she supposes _. I could assume bird form once more, and fly away, so quickly that they could not shoot me down, so quickly that they could not hope to follow me, so quickly that I could disappear over the horizon and they would lose sight of me, and never find me again._

Is she the sort of woman who flees her husband like that? Is she the sort of woman who flees her own husband, taking off in the middle of the night like a thief? Is she meant to take off in the middle of the night like a thief, even though she has stolen nothing, even though she has only taken back what was always hers, and should always remain hers?

Elwing does not know. She does not like to think of herself thusly. She does not like to think of Eärendil thusly, either, but then, she does not like to think of her husband as a thief, either, and here he is, wearing on his brow something that does not belong to him, something that belongs to Elwing and Elwing only. He’s capable of theft. Elwing does not think she can know for certain what else he is capable of, now.

( _I don’t want to_ — She has to, anyways. It does not matter what she wants. It has rarely ever mattered what she wants.)

Suppose she does assume bird form, though. Assume she takes the shape of a bird and flies away, and manages to evade capture or death, manages to fly in the right direction to end up back at the shores of Ennor without succumbing to exhaustion first and _really_ drowning, this time (The Sea has always promised Elwing that she will never come to harm in the waters except by her own will. But the Sea has always held Eärendil in higher esteem and higher favor than Elwing, and Elwing does not know about the Sea’s promises. The Sea is a fickle thing. Why should its promises not be the same?). What then?

Really, what then? That leaves Elwing alone on the shores of Ennor, completely alone, and she cannot hope to return to her husband’s side after that, cannot hope to have his harmonious company after that. He believes, however falsely, that the Silmaril belongs to him, now. It is logical to assume, therefore, that Eärendil would regard any attempts of Elwing’s to reclaim it for her own as theft from _him_ , and respond to it accordingly. The bonds between them, already damaged by his theft, might well be severed entirely by her perceived theft.

So that leaves Elwing alone, completely alone. That leaves Elwing to wander the world alone, until someone tries to kill her for the great prize she wears about her neck, until someone finally succeeds in killing her for the great prize she wears around her neck. Elwing… Elwing has been alone in spirit. She has lived nearly her whole life with no family around her, only distant kin who seem to regard her as queen before they regard her as cousin. She has been a married woman for several years now, but she has been wife to a man who seems to think nothing of leaving her alone for years at a time. Elwing has been alone.

Elwing has been alone, in mind and in heart, but she has never lived her life in total isolation. Even when she has had no close companions, no confidants but what she has worn around her neck (and it cannot provide the full experience of having a confidant, for no matter how much Elwing whispers to it, it can never whisper back), she has at least had people around her. Fearful people, fearful subjects, but they were people. Elwing did not live in silence as she could have been living in silence. Elwing did not live in total solitude as she could have been living in total solitude.

She will, if she successfully leaves the ship now, if she successfully makes her way back to shore. Elwing’s people are gone. Her children are gone. Her relationship with her husband, however much of it might be left, will be gone. She will have herself, and herself alone, and for all that she has been alone, she does not think she wants to—

Elwing can make no sound in this thick, uneasy darkness, punctuated by the constant roll and bob of the ship, punctuated by the susurrus of waves beating against the hull. She can make no sound, for she is not alone in this place, and if she was to sigh too loudly, if she was to cry out or to sob or to wail, let alone _scream_ , everyone onboard would be awake and dashing to her side in an instant. Regardless of who their greater loyalty is to, Elwing does not think Eärendil would have selected _bad_ men to man a ship trying so desperately to seek safe passage to the Undying Lands, and thus, they cannot be the sort of men who could hear someone among their number start to scream, and just ignore it. That knowledge stops her mouth, if just barely. The noise she knows not how to name rattles around in her chest instead, beating its fists against her heart.

_Can I not just touch it? Can I not just hear its song transmitted through my fingertips, when we are like this? Can I not just have the comfort of its presence?_

Mayhap being close by it will be enough. Elwing does not think she would have ever made such concessions in the Lisgardh, but this is not the Lisgardh, and Elwing’s world is nothing like what she remembered, and she thinks that the world she is in now might well be a world that demands more concessions from her than she has ever particularly wanted to give. (It will be. It will be, she knows. Her kingdom has been lost to her for a second time, and with such a ruin, her world must be changed entirely, to become something even more hostile towards her than it was before. In an increasingly hostile world, Elwing knows that more will be demanded of her. More concessions will be demanded of her, and though they might be things that she would never have consented to concede when she was queen, even if she was queen over a refugee camp, the world will not care about that. The world has never cared about that. What the world cares about is that all of Elwing’s potential has run to nothing, and yet, she is still here. Still living on, still hungry, still struggling. More struggles will be demanded of her. Was not the same demanded of Húrin Thalion after his release from Angband? Was not the same demanded of Gwindor, after his escape? It will be the same for Elwing.)

Mayhap being close by the Silmaril will be enough. The paths of her life have led her to her husband’s side. The paths of Elwing’s life have led her away from the shore, and out to Sea. Perhaps their paths will stay together, from now on. If their paths remain together, than even if Elwing cannot see a clear path forward towards reclaiming the Silmaril for her own, cannot see a clear path forward towards wearing it about her neck once more, she can at least be in the constant presence of the Silmaril. She can still reach out and touch it. She can still hear its song vibrating under the surface of her skin.

And Elwing goes seeking that out now, for she does not think she could go down into sleep without hearing the song in her ears and under her skin. It has been years since she last took the carcanet off, and she has had its song singing a lullaby into her ears every night for all of those years. She cannot have it all night any longer, but if only for a moment…

Elwing brushes her fingers lightly against the surface of the Silmaril. She brushes her fingers against the surface of the jewel, and waits.

And waits.

Its light has not abated, but Elwing’s heartbeat is picking up as she prods the jewel more intently, her eyes poring over its surface for… She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for, the casing has always been reckoned as something that makes adamant seem like chalk by comparison, the casing is supposed to be the hardest substance on the face of the earth, utterly unbreakable by those not privy to the secret of its making, and there’s no way it could be broken, there’s no way any of the materials trapped within could escape, no way the song could be silenced, but it’s silent now, there’s a void where the song should be, why is it so quiet, why is it _so quiet…_

Elwing grasps at the Silmaril with her whole hand, now, rather than just her fingertips. She stretches out her will and her mind, searching desperately for any hint of the song that has lulled her so many times, just a single chord, please, just something to remember, and nothing. Always nothing.

She scrapes her fingernails against the surface of the jewel, and accomplishes nothing but a faint scratching noise that sounds more like a rat scraping against the exterior of a barrel of grain than a queen searching for some response from her most cherished heirloom. Elwing swallows down what she knows for certain to be a scream, this time, and lets out a long, shaky breath.

Is… is the jewel really so fickle as that? Can the jewel really abandon its rightful owner so easily as all that?

Elwing does not know. No answers will be forthcoming, not tonight. She knows that much: not tonight. Elwing has never found answers in the dead of the night. (She has rarely found answers at all, but never in the dead of the night.)

When she lies down on the hammock, she lies down with her back to Eärendil. She can still see the light of the Silmaril shining on the wall of the hold. As she shuts her eyes, she does so with a feeling like drowning that it no longer shines for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lindar** —‘Singers’; the clan name the Nelyar gave themselves (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. The Lindar (later known to outsiders as the Teleri) split into several groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Onodrim** —the Sindarin name given to the Ents (Sindarin) (singular: Onod)  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Food insecurity; trauma; body image issues; loss]

Life on a ship is… Elwing does not know how anyone ever lives on a ship. Between the constant rolling of the ship, forever robbing anyone onboard a still and solid place to stand, between the constant sense of enclosure, of being confined to such a small place, of having absolutely _no_ privacy whatsoever, Elwing does not understand how anyone has ever managed to live on a ship, let alone _enjoy_ it the way Eärendil obviously enjoys living aboard this ship. Elwing has not been assailed by the sickness Eärendil has so cheerfully told her often assails people newly acquainted with long voyages—Eärendil tried to say something about Elwing being a natural for this, but Elwing glared at him until he stopped, and Elwing can only hopes he recognizes how inappropriate it would be for him to say anything to her like “It seems as if you were born for this”—but she can hardly say that she is _comfortable_. There is no comfort to be found in a fragile little wooden vessel entirely at the mercy of the Sea. There is no comfort to be found in the knowledge that a single rogue wave could put an end to them all.

There must be a very specific personality that is not only amenable to life on a ship, but actively seeks it out. Elwing is not entirely certain what that personality _is_ , exactly, but she thinks that an unreasonable love of danger must be a part of it. She wishes she could say whether or not she knows that Eärendil has an unreasonable love of danger, but she does not think she knows Eärendil has well as she thought she did. Not only because of what he now wears on his brow at every moment, waking and sleeping, never even seeming to consider that it rightfully belongs to another (there was no song, there was no song, why could she not hear the song?), but because of… well, everything about his demeanor when he stands as captain of this ship.

Eärendil has always been intended for leadership of some sort. Where Elwing only took on any leadership role at all on account of the death of every close male relative she can name, Eärendil was the much-awaited male heir of the king of Gondolin. Though at the time of his birth, no one in beautiful, hidden, arrogant Gondolin so much as considered the possibility that they would be fleeing their broken, burning kingdom in just a few years’ time, they were not entirely without sense. If Gondolin ever rode out to battle once more, it was entirely possible that its king could be killed in that battle, and thus, a male heir was not desired so much as it was desperately _longed_ for.

(One does wonder why Lady Idril was not enough. Then again, one does wonder why _Lúthien_ was not enough.)

Eärendil has always been intended for leadership of some sort, and thus, even in Gondolin, his education must have been inclined towards such. Elwing has never seen much sign of it in him in the Lisgardh—in the Lisgardh, he was her helper, her right hand, never a rival—but she can see it here, she can see it now, and it would be like staring at a different person entirely, if not for the fact that his face ever remains the same.

He does not play the tyrant, not even here where his authority over his men is obviously absolute. He does not play the tyrant, even when it becomes clear to Elwing that any of the men he has selected to man this ship would follow any order he gave them. Eärendil does not play the tyrant, but it is immediately obvious to Elwing, watching affairs play out on the ship, just who is in charge here. She could hardly have failed to notice. She still has eyes to see with, even if her greatest tool for working with the world around her has been stolen from her.

All of that drops away when he lays eyes on her. All of that drops away when he comes over to speak with her wherever she might be sitting, out of the way. All of that drops away, and that is probably the biggest reason Elwing still recognizes him at all.

Elwing does not know what to feel about that recognition. Sometimes, she thinks she hates it. Sometimes, she thinks of it as something to cling to as if her life depends on it, even if clinging makes her hands start to bleed. He… Whatever else he is, whatever else he has become, he is the only link Elwing has to her life on the shore. He is the only link she has to the broken ruins of her lost kingdom, now that the Silmaril will no longer sing for her. That bond is enough that Elwing thinks she might even still love him, in spite of the theft, in spite of the shocking insistence that it was no theft at all.

That might make her weak. She has nothing else to bind her now, at least until they come ashore again. Elwing will have to endure weakness until then.

But truly, she does not think she will ever set foot on a ship again, once they have finally found the shoreline—either the Undying Lands, which Eärendil still seeks, or the shores of Ennor, which Elwing thinks is _considerably_ more likely. There is not much here that appeals to someone like her.

Elwing is a child of the earth, and now that she has learned to assume bird shape, she supposes she is a child of the air, as well, but even birds must come back down to earth eventually, and as such, she suspects her nature will always be more earth than air. She had not realized how _much_ of a child of the earth she is until she was put aboard a sailing ship and forced to contend with the Sea at all hours, but though she has not once been struck down with seasickness and it did not take long for her feet to grow nearly as steady beneath her as those of the mariners, she is always acutely aware that this is not her natural arena. The Iathrim were made for the deep woods and shaded glens and glittering caves. They are not like their cousins, the Falathrim. Though they have some affinity for water—some of them, anyways—they are not made to be mariners. They were made for land.

She will come to no harm here, except by her own will. Such is what Elwing reminds herself over and over again, though she can be certain of no such thing, considering the way that her world has changed. She will come to no harm except by her own will, but it seems to her that the Sea could easily become creative with its definition of ‘harm,’ seems to her that the winds could grow too strong or die altogether, seems to her that the waves could grow too rough, seems to her that any number of other things could go wrong. It might be termed mischief, malicious mischief that nevertheless fails to meet the criteria of ‘harm.’

The song is…

Hmm. Elwing does not refer to the Silmaril, which remains agonizingly silent ( _Was I so ill-favored as all that, was I so disposable, that it could so readily decide that there is another it would rather sing to?)_. There is another song which even she must concede is greater by far than that, a song greater than all songs on the face of the earth, a song that without which, nothing else would be possible. No Edhel has ever needed to be told that this is the Song of the Ainur, the Song of Worldly Creation. All they must do is listen to it, and know.

The song is in the water, and Elwing has listened to it at the shore before. It’s not that it’s comforting, so much as it’s easy for worries to be subsumed within its immensity. She stopped listening to it when she stopped going down to the sore, stopped doing anything that would give her victorious rival opportunities to gloat, but there is no getting away from the Sea out here. There is no getting away from the song here, if even the smallest part of your mind has been left open to it.

Elwing had to close _all_ of her mind against it, not long after she first awoke here. The song is… How to properly describe the _scope_ of it, how to give true credit to how heavy, how piercing, how immeasurably _vast_? Elwing had to close her mind against its entirety, for the weight of it threatened to crush, and the sheer size of the thing threatened to imperil her mind, how _small_ she was made, how incomprehensibly _tiny_ , to be dwarfed by a mote of dust, and you cannot understand if you have never heard it for yourself, you cannot understand if you have been forced to listen to the Song of Worldly Creation where it is strongest , you cannot understand it if you have never been forced to listen to that song in a place where it is as close as it ever can be to being whole in this Arda Marred, and forced to confront just how small you are compared to creation in its entirety.

If you have ever experienced anything like that, you no doubt have an idea as to how unsettling it is, both mentally and almost physically. Even if you have not, surely you have something resembling an imagination, and the ability to exercise it. You must be able to understand why Elwing has shut her mind off from the song that keeps trying to worm its way inside of her mind. You must understand why she has chosen to deafen herself, even if only temporarily.

This is no place for her. This is not a place where Elwing can hope to make a life for herself, not forever, for she must put in constant effort to shut her mind off from the song, for she must constantly watch the horizon for signs of strange waves with something somewhat stronger than anxiety picking at the walls of her heart, though Elwing does not think it’s rising to the level of panic, not quite yet. This is not a place for Elwing. She longs for the earth. They must find it again eventually, be it wrecked on the shores of Ennor, or docking on the shores of those lands they are forbidden to go seeking.

Eärendil and his mariners seem to think that the forbidden shores might be more likely. They whisper among themselves that Eärendil taking the Silmaril for his own has had some impact on his powers of navigation, that it has had some impact on the Sea, that there is perhaps a path open to them that was not open before. Perhaps, they whisper among themselves, when they think that Elwing is not listening to them, they will find the Undying Lands after all.

Elwing does not know about that. She does not see that theft of the Silmaril has ever ended well for the thief, in the end. It seems to her that Eärendil, having stolen the thing, is more likely to run the ship aground on a reef than he is to successfully sail the ship down the hidden path to lands that the Rodyn have decreed off-limits to all those living in Ennor. And she knows so little about how sailing works, about how this ship works, about how the _Sea_ works, beyond its at times vicious caprice. Perhaps it could work out exactly as Eärendil and his men seem to think it will, but Elwing does not see how that is very likely.

She wonders what the far south of Ennor is like. She knows virtually nothing about it; the most southerly Edhil settlement she knows of is Edhellond, which when you consider Arda as a whole, is really not very far south at all. She does not even think it to be all that close to the Girdle of Arda. There must be so much in the world that is south of Edhellond, and yet she knows so little of it. Most likely, she will come to be more closely acquainted with it as the years wear on, for as Elwing looks towards the front of the ship (it has another name, she knows, but she cannot remember what it is, and does not care to ask to find out), she cannot help but think about how fragile this ship is, in the face of the Sea and what fury it could unleash upon them all.

She has held the conviction, now wavering, that she will come to no harm in the Sea but by her own will. That conviction _has_ been set to wavering by the way her world has become so alien to what she thought she knew it to be, but out here, in the midst of the Sea, that conviction wavers even more. Elwing sees the Sea as it really is for the first time, and she thinks that though she has heard something she thinks to be the Sea promise her that she will come to no harm in it by her own will, the Sea is something that could very easily _lie_.

The ship could be wrecked, and they could wind up back on the shores of Ennor, further from home than they have ever been. Or the ship could be wrecked, and they could all die.

They could all die.

Perhaps that would be fitting. Perhaps it would be fitting for Elwing to meet her end out here, in a Sea that has spun lie-promises in her ears. In the Houses of the Dead, she would come to know her family for the very first time. In the Houses of the Dead, she might just be something close to whole.

Elwing has sought such a conclusion once before, and was denied. By her own will, yes, but still, she was denied. The idea of it might appeal to her, and it appeals very much, the idea of sealing up all the holes inside of her with something resembling answers is sweeter than all others, but she suspects she will just be denied once more, if it comes down to it. If she will only be denied, better not to go seeking it out.

Someone should tell Eärendil that. Probably Elwing. But Elwing has been watching him as well, and it is not just that he is more commanding, more of a leader out here on this ship than he has ever been in the Lisgardh. Elwing has been watching him, and she thinks… She thinks he has greater cheer out at Sea than on land, as well. Why his cheer would be greater out on the tempestuous and likely-treacherous Sea, she has no idea, but she does not think she has to know the reason why. She does not have to know the reason why, only has to understand that it is.

Elwing thinks about that cheer, and she thinks about the way that cheer would shrivel into nothingness if ever she managed to convince him that what he wants from the Sea, it will likely never give him. She thinks about the way his smiles would die, and possibly never be reborn. He has given her… He has given her disappointment, he has disappointed her more than she ever thought he could, but the idea of taking a needle to his hope and striking it full of bleeding holes gives her no satisfaction. She can see it so easily in her mind’s eye, and the only thing it inspires in her is a dull ache in her chest. It’s… It’s not something to be sought out.

Elwing does not think she is made for life on the Sea, let alone life on a ship. She does not know when such a life will end. Soon, she hopes. One way or another, soon.

-

There is something else Elwing does not care for, as regards to life onboard a ship, and if it is a ridiculous thing to not care for, considering the sort of life she has lived, the fact that it’s ridiculous does not stop her from dwelling upon it.

“The catch was rather poor today, I’m afraid,” Eärendil remarks, as he hands Elwing’s plate to her in the little makeshift galley. He does not sound too sorry for it, but then, Elwing has never known anyone to be too apologetic regarding the state of the food they serve to her. There’s not much point to it. “We can usually find more fish than this.”

“Are you sure of that, Eärendil?” one of the mariners asks slyly, before Elwing can make any comment—not that she was certain if there was anything she wished to say at all. “We might be sailors, but I don’t remember any of us being _fishermen_. When’s the last time we pulled in a full net?”

Elwing watches Eärendil with some curiosity, primarily because she does not particularly want to look at her plate, though some of that curiosity is genuine, whispering to her to watch and see what he does, and says. She has never seen Eärendil challenged in such a fashion before, particularly not on this ship where he is more commanding and more of a leader than he has ever been on land. To see how he reacts would be… enlightening.

Eärendil rolls his eyes and laughs, and Elwing does not know whether to be disappointed by such a non-reaction, or to be relieved, for anger would be alien to her, the storm clouds of anger in his face would be like seeing a stranger possess him, and though Elwing has been forced to come to the realization that he is not quite the man she thought he was, she is glad she does not have to contend with a total stranger, at least. “When’s the last time you managed to cast a line without losing the whole rod?” he retorts, and sits down at Elwing’s side to eat.

A companionable silence (it’s not so companionable for Elwing, who is an outsider in this group, still, despite being married to their leader, but her husband and his men seem companionable enough with each other) settles over the galley as everyone who is not on duty outside tucks into their meal. That leaves Elwing, unfortunately, with no choice but to look at her meal.

Fish again. She does not know why she is surprised. The ship has been at Sea for she has no idea how long, and stores of food procured on land can only last for so long, even with rationing. Even were she on land, even if she was back in the Lisgardh, staring down at her plate and thinking unenthusiastically ‘ _fish again_ ’ would have been a strange thought, indeed, for food that was _not_ fish was difficult to come by at the best of times, and the people of the Lisgardh were not picky about what little food they could come by.

And yet, her thought as she stares down at her scanty place is an unenthusiastic ‘fish again.’ Elwing is not so much of a child as to say that out loud, but she cannot control her thoughts so easily, and her thoughts are ‘fish again, why is it fish again?’ Oh, she knows exactly why it’s fish again. There is only reason why it could be fish again, and Elwing has no choice but to eat fish today, fish later today, fish tomorrow, and so on and so on. She won’t be eating anything that is not fish for a very long time, and there is no use complaining about it, not really.

The complaint is… not going away. She would much rather it went away, honestly. It’s not going to _help_ anything, it’s not going to make food that is not fish magically materialize on her plate, and really, she should just be able to quiet her mind and make the complaint go away out of her thoughts altogether. Her stomach is not complaining, the empty spot in her stomach is screaming to be filled, though the portion she has been given is certainly not going to be enough to do that—she’s had larger meals in the Lisgardh than the portion of cooked fish she has been given, and those meals were not enough to quiet her stomach and banish hunger from her body—but it will still be something, better than nothing.

The complaint might be… not about food, so much as about location. Elwing is no more fond of life on the Sea or life on a ship now than she was when she first realized that this was where she was going to be spending her life for the foreseeable future. She is no more fond of it now than she was then, but she does not see when she is going to have anything resembling an _escape_ from it. She’s going to be eating fish until they see land again, and depending on the time of year when they find the land, she’s likely to be eating fish for a good while after that. She’ll be eating fish, with no reprieve from eating fish, and she’ll be on the Sea, with no reprieve from being on the Sea, with none of the diversity (well, what passed for diversity in the Lisgardh) that would have come from being on land, none of the security (what passed for security in the Lisgardh) that would have come from being on the land.

The complaint might be commentary more on being trapped, than on the food itself. Elwing considers that. It does not make the food any easier to swallow.

One of the men eating alongside them seems to have noticed Elwing’s disquiet, however much she might try to mute it behind a neutral expression. (She was able to mask these things so much more easily in the Lisgardh. She is still a queen, but being queen over nothing at all might have made other things slip, as well. She hopes not, but who knows, really?) He eyes Elwing’s face, Elwing picking at her plate with her knife, and then catches Eärendil’s eye meaningfully. “Do you recall that one meal we had in Edhellond?”

Beside her, Eärendil stiffens. Perhaps he is meeting the gaze of the man who has spoken, but if he is, Elwing cannot see it. Elwing does not look up from her plate as he speaks. Elwing… does not particularly want to listen to people talk about other meals they have had, not at this moment. It used to be that she reveled in tales of feasts had long ago, and perhaps she still would in another mood, but… but not now.

All her ‘not now’s’, do not seem to be enough, for the man goes on talking, so blithe and so free of cares that he might as well have been speaking of that particular meal while presiding over a feast of his own. “I never expected them to put out so much for guests, you know. I would never expected them to have so much food in winter, let alone so much fresh.”

“It’s much warmer there than in Beleriand,” another of the men, equally oblivious to Eärendil’s tension and Elwing’s sinking, remarks sagely. “There was scarcely any snow, remember? Not even snow, not really, just frost, and they told us it was the coldest winter they’d had in over a decade.”

“I’d love to live somewhere frost in winter draws that sort of comment.”

“As if that makes you strange. But, oh, do you remember the food?”

And totally oblivious to any effect this might have on the people sitting at the table with him, eating their meager meals right alongside him, the man launches into an agonizingly detailed description of the winter feast that awaited them when they sailed to Edhellond as guests seeking news and shelter.

Perhaps… perhaps under other circumstances, Elwing would have gone seeking this out. She has sought out similar before, under other circumstances. She has sought out the phantom smells and sights and that feeling of the food in her hands, thought it might not be _her_ hands, as such. She’s sought it out, and it’s hurt her, but it’s never hurt her badly enough to make her stop—no, what did that was when all the candidates for granting her such vicariously sweet and painful sensations ran out of tales to tell her.

She was not seeking it out now. She was not, was not, was _not_ seeking it out now. She does not want to hear it, now that she is further than she has ever been from making those phantom sensations into something resembling reality. She does not want to hear it, now when all it can do for her is make her stomach cry out even more loudly and painfully than it has before.

And yet, she cannot shut her ears. Here she sits, held hostage as this man begins to flood her mind with images of roasted squash seasoned with garlic and cracked pepper and some savory oil, the name of which he cannot recall. That image is followed by the capons and baked quails bristling with fennel and thyme, followed by a strange, sweet pastry, the name of which he also cannot recall, chased after by the mouthwatering aroma of freshly-baked bread, of pies made with every fruit still fit for baking, of the herb gardens tended to in greenhouses, the sweet wines that flowed so freely from every last table in the whole place.

And never taste, _never_ taste, and Elwing cannot decide if that is extra torment to drive nails under her skin, or if it is the only reprieve these visions have ever granted her, if never knowing the taste of what she might but never will eat would be the only thing keeping her from driving herself into the grave seeking it out. She does not know, cannot know, but even if it is the sole reprieve, it still cuts her like a knife, still gouges deep and seeks even deeper. Elwing expects to see blood dripping onto her plate. She never fails to be surprised by its absence.

No good, no good, there is no good that this can do her. Not today, not here, not _now_. What this does is remind her al too starkly of the reality of her pitiful body, so small and so bony, without the Silmaril hanging at her neck to sing sweetly into her ears and make the inadequacy of her body matter less to her than it should. What this does is remind her that she was never able to make such things a reality on the tables of the Lisgardh, that she was never able to wield the power of the Silmaril as Lúthien could, she could alter the appearance of things but never their nature, that she could offer up illusions but never anything resembling real change. What this does is remind her that she will never get the chance to try, that she will never get the opportunity to see if perhaps her discovery of how to change her form could have unlocked other things within her, for Eärendil has stolen the Silmaril and with each passing day, Elwing’s hope of winning it back wanes further towards ashen nothingness. What this does is remind her that she can do nothing but live in this world, and that her power is not, and will never be, sufficient to influence it. All she can do is try to avoid being crushed under the feet of those who would destroy her for as long as she can, until finally their shadows loom so large and so dark overhead that there is no hope of avoiding weight seeking to pulverize her bones, no matter how fast she runs for daylight.

Being reminded of these things, having these things ground into her so sharply and so comprehensively, rather makes Elwing lose her appetite, among _other_ things. Those other things, she may not express. Even were she not a queen (queen of nothing, but her blood is still the blood of kings and queens, and there are certain things she must expect of herself, even when no one else will), she is an adult woman, and it is not appropriate to scream at someone for recalling in apparent innocence a meal they once enjoyed, no matter how tempting or how pleasurable the idea of it might be. Similarly, it is not appropriate to break down crying for no apparent reason, no matter how much the sobs might be battering in her chest, raging against the walls of her heart, scouring the roof of her mouth when she will not part her teeth to let them through. And it is not appropriate to throw her plate, or her silverware, for only children do such things, and small children, at that, and though her age in years would make her a child if her blood was entirely that of the Edhil, she is not entirely of the Edhil, and she is too old and too grown to be throwing her plate at the wall in anger.

There is little she can do. (There is much she imagines doing.) It would be churlish even to stand up from the table and leave the galley behind her. Losing her appetite, picking at her food, that is virtually the only thing Elwing can do in such a situation, besides continuing to breathe in defiance of every whispering thought in the back of her mind that bids her to stop. She… she wasn’t feeling terribly enthusiastic towards her meal in the first place. She had intended to eat primarily because it’s what you do to sustain your body, rather than because she expected to find any contentment in it, rather than because she expected to find any _joy_ in it. There will be other fish, and other meals. It is imprudent, perhaps, to skip meals when they are so scanty, but Elwing does not think there will be any will in her to do anything but pick.

No. She knows there will be no such will but that one. She is not looking for any other.

That man goes on and on—it seems to stretch on for an eternity, though the light in the galley never fails—never, ever realizing that not everyone in the galley takes such enjoyment in recounting his meals in Edhellond as he does. The fact that the other of the mariners taking this time for the meal keeps egging him on surely has something to do with that, for that must go a long way towards concealing Eärendil and Elwing’s silence, Eärendil’s stiffness and the way Elwing must be _visibly_ sinking into herself by now. She cannot imagine that either is something he would have failed to notice, had he not the sufficient distraction from the effect his words have on those who do not want to hear his recollections as well as he does. If he knew the effect, one wonders if he would be so eager to speak.

It…

How many meals can they possibly have had in Edhellond? How long can they possibly have stayed there during that winter when traveling was impossible? _A winter he could have spent at home, with me and our children, and he was spending it so far south of our home, living an easier life than any of us ever enjoyed in the Lisgardh. A winter he could have spent at home with his family, and he was spending it feasting, instead._ Elwing regards Eärendil through her thick hair, eyes narrowed. _I wonder if you thought of me when you ate their food. I wonder if you thought of our children. I wonder if you thought of the meals we were eating at home, I wonder if you thought of how hungry we all were as you ate your fill and satisfied your hunger and experienced hours at a time in which you felt no hunger at all. I wonder if you thought of me, and every last moment I have ever spent afraid of starving._ Were _you thinking of me?_

The part of Elwing that longs to ask these questions does battle with the part of her that fears ever to hear the answers, until they debate each other into silence and she finds nothing she can grasp on well enough to ever ask any such question at all. It’s… it’s probably better just not to know. She’s already discovered things she did not know about Eärendil, and those things have brought her no joy. It’s probably better not to know if he is also capable of eating the sort of feast he knows his wife has never known, and not think about her even once while he does it.

Elwing does not know how long she sits, helpless to do anything but listen as the man spins tales of the meals he enjoyed in Edhellond. Not hours, though it certainly feels like it. By the end of it, her skin is stinging and her lungs are screaming, aching from lack of air with the small, shallow breaths she has forced herself to take to keep breathing at all. The force of everything she has held inside of her, the anger, the screaming, the crying, the violence, even if only against the inanimate, rather than the animate, feels fit to tear her limb from limb. She wonders at how no one can hear all of it screaming inside of her. _She_ can hear it screaming, and its rage has reached such a crescendo that finally, _finally_ , there is something that can at least partly drown out the droning on and on about food that spills forth from the man’s mouth. It can even partly drown out the tossing and turning of the Sea outside. It’s… it’s something.

-

It’s something, and not enough of something to keep the thoughts from returning to her mind when she is trapped in the dull nothingness of the dark of night, trying and failing to sleep.

Elwing runs her hand through her hair as she lies in the dark, scraping her fingernails sharply against her scalp, wishing she could take any comfort in the way her skin stings, but comfort is too distant to be touched, let alone grasped. She must grapple with all of this without it.

She is alone tonight, for Eärendil is taking a night watch at the helm. This leaves Elwing alone in the hammock where they have been sleeping, and she wishes she could say that sleeping alone bothers her, but she has slept alone for the vast majority of their marriage, the time she has spent aboard this ship is honestly the longest amount of time she has spent sleeping in a bed with him since the first few months of their marriage, and she is honestly more used to sleeping alone than she is to sleeping alongside him. It’s… it’s actually been a little easier, sleeping alone in the hammock, even if it rocks back and forth more than she likes. It’s easier to sleep alone in this hammock, when she does not have to deal with the slow, steady breathing of a body beside hers. She does not know when she will grow accustomed to that again. Hopefully it will be before her sleep suffers so much for lack of acclimatization that she ceases being able even to see straight when she’s up and about.

Elwing is alone tonight, and the men who sleep in the hammocks around hers sleep so deeply that Elwing thinks she could get up and pace all around them, and they would not awaken. She does not have the will for that, but there is a small, perverse part of her that would like to rouse them all into wakefulness as well, if she cannot find sleep. It’s their fault she cannot find sleep, anyways. It’s only fair.

But life is not fair, and Elwing is not a child to be so petty about it, and so she lies in silence in the hammock, scraping at her scalp and wishing she knew how to banish thoughts from her mind entirely.

Food. It all comes down to food, in the end. How little of it they have, never enough for comfort. How difficult it was to obtain in the Lisgardh without compromising the secrecy of the camp, and how difficult it is to obtain on this ship, where the only way to get more food is by casting out a net or a line and hoping that there will be enough fish within range to sustain everyone onboard until the next opportunity to go looking again. How little variety they have in their day-to-day lives, relying primarily on what the Sea sees fit to give them, when the Sea cares to grant them anything at all. How what they have is never enough to satisfy, never enough to drive hunger away in full for even a moment.

Or, perhaps, it is not food that it all comes down to in the end, but hunger. Hunger is what necessitates food, and hunger is what has dogged Elwing’s steps for as long as she can remember. Hunger is what has stalked the pathways of the Lisgardh, hunger is what has stalked Elwing’s steps since she was not quite three years old. Her constant companion, closer than her skin, but she would never call it a friend. Friends don’t pick and worry at your skin, friends don’t drive beneath your skin to scrape at your muscles and your bones, friends don’t whisper such things in your ears as Elwing has heard whisper in hers. Friends do not ask you, over and over and over again, why it is that you have always failed to live up to the example set by those who went before you.

Elwing has excuses she can offer up, in regards to that last point. She has always known the excuses, though they have never sat less comfortably on her tongue than they do now. If only she had known, if only she had had _anyone_ around who could teach her, someone of her own blood and close, someone who would have _understood_ …

These thoughts, if they were known to the dead, would no doubt be cold comfort to the dead of the Lisgardh. The Kinslayers came and murdered them all, and here is their queen, having survived the carnage, lying awake at night in bed and wondering why it is that she could not have been better for them. Cold comfort indeed, when she is alive to have those thoughts at all, and they must languish in the Houses of the Dead, waiting for the Lord of the Dead to deem them worthy of returning to life so that they themselves can seek anything that was better than what they had in the Lisgardh. If they think of Elwing at all, Elwing doubts they care much for her own thoughts regarding her inadequacy. They who were forced to live with that inadequacy cannot entertain much patience regarding it.

Elwing… Elwing does not know how much it is wise to think of them. Either the number of times, or the amount of time she spends thinking of them in each iteration. It can do her no good. There is no lesson she can take away from it that would actually do her any good, for this time, the broken ruin of her lost kingdom will yield up nothing but further ruin. Even if there was something that could grow out of the ashes, Elwing cannot return to them as she is, so diminished that they would be forgiven for thinking her a houseless spirit fit to evaporate in the first ray of morning sunlight. What few survivors slunk away from the Lisgardh have no doubt found other lords by now, and do not care to go back to being ruled by the queen who could not protect them when their enemies came.

She’s thinking of them _now_ , though, thinking of the children who were born—not many, for the Edhil were fearful of bringing new life into such a world as what they inhabited after the fall of Menegroth, but there were some—in the Lisgardh, doomed to go their whole lives without ever knowing security, or comfort, or something that was not hunger. For all her exalted status, Elwing sees too clearly that her experiences were much closer to that of those children, than of the lords who were adults when they were forced to leave Menegroth behind them forever. Her nature is more like that of the children born in the Lisgardh, and like them, she might die without ever having done more than visualize the sorts of feasts that were enjoyed at Menegroth’s high table.

It…

Her family would not have died ignorant of such. Even her brothers were old enough and had spent enough time within Menegroth’s walls to have been able to carry so many memories of the bounty of Menegroth’s tables to the Houses of the Dead with them. Those thoughts must surely sustain them in a place where there is no sustenance but thought. Those thoughts must surely serve as a link between them and the sort of people they were when they were yet living.

Elwing will go to the Houses of the Dead, one way or another, by land or by Sea, without ever having experienced such. She will go to where her family dwells, and she wonders if they will even recognize her, someone with experiences so alien to their own. They just… they just won’t _match_. There stands Elwing’s parents, great and good and glorious, the king and queen of Doriath. There stands Elwing’s older brothers, twin princes of Doriath, just children, murdered at the tender age of seven, but still every inch princes, in spite of that. Here stands Elwing, queen over a refugee camp and then queen over nothing, pale and pinched and never more than five steps from starving, so inadequate that ultimately she could protect no one, not even herself. They would not recognize her. Why would they? What is there about her to recognize? Everyone tells her that her features are similar to her father’s, but features are just features, and if the spirit behind them does not appear as it should, what is there to recognize?

Elwing sinks as far as she can into the hammock, pressing her body so tightly against it that she’s surprised not to hear the metal rings fixing it to the ceiling creak and groan. She presses her mouth tight against the hysterical noise threatening to break out of it, for she does not wish to wake the sleeping men, does not wish to have any company alongside the thoughts that swirl about inside of her. All she wants is to—

She does not know what she wants for right now. Truly, she does not. Elwing has spent a lot of time not thinking about what she wants, for it has never been _about_ what she wants. She has been a queen with her duties, duties that she might be inadequate to fulfill but must fulfill, anyways. Such people as her do not have time for what they want. Perhaps if she had been queen over a place even a thousandth as glorious and as safe and secure as Doriath, there would have been enough time for her to pursue such things, but not to be, not to be.

Elwing does not want to think about what she wants right now. She does not even _know_ what she wants right now, and does not wish to contemplate it. There is the basic, of course—the return of the Silmaril into her possession—but that is to be expected, when it comes to heirlooms and their rightful owners. There is no use wanting anything when she could die at any moment, when the Sea could come up in its terrible fury and wreck this ship at any moment, leaving Elwing to drown now, drown later if any bird shape she assumes cannot find the shore before it must go down, down, down, or be killed by falling debris.

When she is dead, she knows what it is that she desires. She wants her family, wants the comfort of their company, wants the chance to finally know them, even if death is the only place where she can know them. If she goes to the Houses of the Dead, and they do not know her, if they do not recognize her, if they do not care to learn who she is and who she has been and they do not care to take her into their fold…

It… She has been alone. She has been alone in life. She should think she has learned to deal with it. She should think that she has learned to bear this burden, and not buckle underneath it. She must never buckle under any of her burdens, after all, considering what is at stake if she collapses underneath them, if she fails to be present when her people need her to be present. Even when they are pressing her ever closer to the ground, she needs to be able to see beyond them to her duties, and the necessity of carrying them out.

She has been alone in life, and at least when she has been alone in life, she has had the promise of the wind on her face, and light of some sort on her skin. Even if that light is nothing but the glimmer of something far away, even if that light is something so unhallowed as the fires burning in the north, the fires set by their greatest and most terrible of enemies to destroy all that is green and good in the world, even if the wind that hits her face is choked with dust or ash, it was better than nothing. Even when Elwing felt so alone that she was shocked to hear any noise in the world with her at all, even when she felt so alone that even her hunger seemed out of place, she still had the world. She still had the wind whispering through the reeds, still had light of Anor or Ithil or the stars above, or the watch fires set on especially cloudy nights.

She will have none of those things in the Houses of the Dead. There is nearly nothing that the Edhil of Ennor can say with any certainty regarding the Houses of the Dead, but Elwing cannot imagine that there is wind there. She cannot imagine it to be a place where she be able to look up and see Anor shining overhead, or Ithil, or any of the stars. She will not even have the earth beneath her feet, for the earth is for the living, the Houses of the Dead are a place where dead things dwell, and thus, there can be no earth there. She will have herself, and whatever else might be in there with her.

If her family is there, and they do not know her, if they do not recognize her or they simply do not _care_ to recognize her, this inadequate successor of theirs, if she is left to be completely alone in death…

Oh, perhaps not. If she dies out here, then more likely than not, Eärendil will die with her. And perhaps in a place where they can stand without the Silmaril glittering between them, there will come to them some of that closeness they enjoyed during the first few months of their marriage. Perhaps their love will survive death, and become strengthened in it, so that when they leave the Houses of the Dead together, they might do so happy to resume their lives in each other’s company, rather than apart.

Perhaps. If not, it will be Elwing, and whoever she can find waiting in the Houses of the Dead who will even have her company.

Her family. She wants her family. Anyone who makes their way to the Houses of the Dead must want their family, but not everyone can want it the way Elwing wants it. Not everyone who makes their way to the Houses of the Dead does so without having ever truly known their families in the land of the living. Those who find themselves dead without ever having known those who should have been their comfort and their company in life must long for their family especially keenly in death.

It is the same for Elwing. Elwing has never known her family in life. Oh, there was a time when she was alive, and her family was alive at the same time as her, but it was so long ago, and Elwing so young, that she has never been able to remember it, no matter how hard she tries. She’s been as good as utterly without family her entire life.

In death, if she had her family with her, if she was allowed to get to know them properly, if she was allowed at last to have them as her comfort and her company, Elwing thinks that death would not be so great a burden as all that. Nothing is so great a burden when it does not need to be shouldered alone.

If they’re not there, if they’re there but they don’t know her, if they’re there but they don’t _want_ her…

Elwing sets her hand over her eyes, digging her fingernails into her brow. She’ll know what sort of reception she gets if she’s in a position to get such a reception at all. Whether or not she winds up in a position to have a reception or not have one is entirely out of her control. Most things have been out of her control. There are days, many days, when it feels like _every_ thing is out of her control. This is no different. Death is so far from being under the control of any of the Edhil left living in Beleriand that it’s hardly worth contemplating.

It’s hardly worth contemplating. That is what Elwing tells herself, over and over and over again, as she lies awake in the dark and tries to sleep. She cannot control it, cannot stop it from coming to her if it decides it wants to pry her off of the mortal coil. If death decides that this is the end of her first life, then this must be the end of her first life, and there is nothing she can do about it. She should not fret over it overmuch. Should not, should not, should not.

Should not, and yet, here Elwing is, as she ever is, lying awake in the dark. Perhaps she misses the red light, in spite of all the reasons she should not. Perhaps she would rather have _that_ reminder of the fragility of life, over the constant background susurrus of the waves of the Sea battering against the sides of the ship.

She does not know. She wishes to sleep. She wishes that, if she does find herself dead, she does not have to be alone when she is dead. But mostly, she wishes to sleep without her dreams turning into something to endure, rather than something to experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhel** —Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Falathrim** —‘People of the foaming shore’ (Sindarin) or ‘Coast people’ (Sindarin); the Sindar of the Havens of the Falas in Beleriand; Círdan’s people.  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Obsession; hunger]

They sail on for several days more without incident, setting down even more firmly in Elwing’s mind a seafaring life of incredible, droning monotony. She does not know how Eärendil stands it, honestly, for while there was monotony in the Lisgardh as well, at least there was some escaping it by going out into the reeds alone and sitting alone in their shelter. Perhaps this is why mariners tend to be so blasé regarding danger, at least the mariners whom Elwing has known—after long enough experiencing the same things day in and day out without reprieve, perhaps a storm is welcomed by them as a change to just experience something _different_. To that, she would tell them that they would be better off returning to land so that they could experience the whole world, instead of just the endless Sea that yields up nothing for them but the water and what lives within it, but they would no doubt not listen, and Elwing knows herself to be biased away from the Sea, anyways.

They sail on for several days without incident, without even a cloud drifting over the horizon to give the sky some character. Elwing learns not to come out on deck during the brightest hours of the day, for the sheer sameness of her surroundings makes it all seem… she doesn’t know, doesn’t really have a name for it, but the world seems to warp around her, rippling and shimmering, and staring out at it all makes her start to feel a bit ill, the way the roll of the ship under her feet was never enough by itself to accomplish. She does not welcome mealtimes, not exactly, considering it’s just fish over and over and over again, and the portions never do get any larger, but she does find herself looking forward to them, if only for a break in what she does in between mealtimes—sitting in solitude and in silence in whatever shady hold she prefers at that present moment, staring at a wall or digging out any bit of writing that isn’t personal writing that she can find, and reading it. In times such as these, she would have preferred to sit with the Silmaril and let its song fill her ears, but obviously, that is no longer possible for her. Silence, it is.

(How many more times has Elwing sat up in the dark, while everyone else in the hold has been sleeping, staring down at the light radiating from what now sits on Eärendil’s brow? How many more times has she contemplated taking it back for herself? How many times has she clutched at the jewel as tightly as she dares, searching within it and within herself for the song that she knows _must_ still be in there somewhere? How many times has she choked back tears when she has been confronted with silence over and over again, the implicit rejection becoming more harshly stinging with each time it’s delivered to her? She has stopped counting, for to count would be like taking a knife to her heart and twisting. It is better not to count, better to pretend each time is the first time. It hurts a little less.)

Elwing spends those days in silence, mostly, wondering how long it will be before Eärendil gives up once again and turns back towards the east, and those lands which they have known. She wonders how long it will be before she has solid ground beneath her feet again, before she can open just one of the shutters of her mind and not have to worry about being drowned entirely in the chords of the Song of Worldly Creation. She wonders if she will even get the chance. They could all die, or perhaps the Rodyn have another fate in store for them, perhaps it pleases the Rodyn more to let this ship drift on and on across the Sea forever, never finding the Undying Lands as its captain desires, but never wrecking either, never again finding Ennor, either. Elwing does not know which alternative she finds less attractive. She has a feeling she knows which alternative _Eärendil_ finds less attractive, but what bitterness coils in her heart against him, is not strong enough to go to him and ask him.

Then, one morning, they awaken to find the ship surrounded by a dense, impenetrable gray fog, swirling so thickly that out on the deck of the ship, standing at one end, Elwing cannot see far enough to see the other end.

She stands in that fog, and the longer she stands in it, the longer the moisture impregnating the air drips onto her skin and her hair, the more uneasy she becomes. Elwing knows little of the Sea and little of ships, but even being no expert, she can guess at the difficulties that fog such as this must pose to even experienced mariners. With fog like this, how can you find your way? With fog like this, how can you move on, when you could easily be sailing directly towards a shoal or a reef?

Elwing’s unease curdles in her chest like a cilice wrapped around her heart, and her unease is, at least in this, reflected by the mariners and by her husband. There sits over the crew a noticeable pall, palpable even past the fog that could be a pall all its own, as they go about their business this morning. When Eärendil gives orders, he gives them in a hushed tone like he expects there to be someone out there listening to them, hanging on his words to judge them satisfying or wanting.

Elwing would like to believe that the fog is just a fog, but no one around her seems to believe that, and in the fog, or perhaps behind it, she can hear—a whisper. A whisper of what, she has no idea, and she’s afraid that might well be the point, afraid that this fog might well be an invention to confuse anyone who passes through this area, for whatever reason. Is there an island nearby, an island whose inhabitants desire no visitors? Is this island ruled over by a sorcerer of some sort, someone who can draw power from the earth as Melian drew power from the earth, weaving enchantments all about the borders of their land to confuse any would-be trespassers? Is the fog a cover for a defense mechanism of some other sort, perhaps reefs or shoals that would destroy any passing ship so thoroughly that even the wreckage would soon be rendered invisible?

Occupied by these cheerful thoughts, Elwing sits in silence, able to assure herself only that she ought not get in the way while Eärendil and his men contemplate what they should do next. She keeps these thoughts to herself, as well. If Eärendil is not already thinking them himself, he must at least recognize that the fog could be full of danger. If anything, he is probably even more cognizant of what those dangers are than Elwing herself, considering his superior knowledge and experience of the Sea. No need to distract him by trying to flood his mind twice over with what he already knows.

They carry on like this for some hours, until Elwing is certain it must be midday, at least, though she can make out no sign of Anor, and the air around them has grown no warmer. She sinks a little further into her sitting place, wishing she had the will to go down into one of the holds where she cannot see all the fog, but finding herself bereft of even the will to get up from where she sits now. There is a gentle wind blowing them ever westward, without hesitation or delay, but the fog… Elwing has lived by the shores of the Sea for as long as she can remember. She has known thick, lingering fogs. She has never known fog to persist so long into the day; truly it must be midday, or close to it, and by now, Anor should have burned all the fog away.

“Is that a light ahead?” one of the men calls out pointing due west towards something far, far off from the ship itself.

“What, a lighthouse?”

“No, I don’t think so. Just, just come see it for yourself.”

Elwing does not walk over to where he stands, but she does stand up, herself and peer out into the fog where he’s pointing towards. For a long moment, she sees nothing. The fog swirls in her eyes, gently undulating, feeling for all the world as though it’s trying to bid her to _sleep_ , though she is not certain where that thought came from, exactly. Then, eyes narrowed against what bids her shut her eyes entirely, Elwing thinks she does see what the man was describing. Off in the distance, so far away as to be nearly entirely swallowed up by the horizon, she sees the faintest point of light.

A star?

That is soon shaken off as pure fantasy. Anor is up; even if Elwing cannot see it, she can sense that it left its resting place in the furthest east some time ago. Anor is up, and it is high enough in the sky for all the stars to have long since faded away into nothingness, at least until Ithil has primacy once more. Whatever this is, it cannot be a star. It must be something manmade; a fire, most likely, though where it burns from, Elwing could not tell you.

They sail towards that point of light for some time, the passage of time growing to a distant, niggling concern in the backs of all their minds. Elwing’s stomach grumbles piteously, but for once she is able to ignore it, as her eyes instead begin to scour the surface of the water for any sign of rocks or other such traps. No one speaks. It feels as if the whole world is holding its breath.

Then, slowly, so slowly, by the barest increments, such small increments that Elwing thinks the fog has been lifting for maybe close to an hour before the effects truly become noticeable, the fog begins to lift away from the ship, lift away from the _world_ , and what they are sailing towards slowly begins to become visible to their eyes.

Green. That is the first thing Elwing notices. What she is staring at is a green so bright it hurts her eyes, searing itself onto the surface of her eyes so harshly that even when she shuts them, green bursts behind her eyelids, darting and prickling in the self-imposed dark. No one else seems to have the same difficulties as her, so perhaps to eyes that sit in bodies with none of the blood of the Ainur, the green appears to be of a normal hue. But to her, it’s a sharper, brighter green than any green she has known in Ennor. If this is supposed to be vegetation, it’s a sort unlike that which she has ever known.

Wait.

They’re still sailing west.

Now, _now_ , Elwing moves away from where she had been sitting, darting over to the railing to get a closer look. She cranes her neck, leaning so far over the railing that at one point, someone calls out to her, fearing she might fall over the side, but she gives that one no heed. Instead, her eyes score the horizon, searching out any hint of detail they can find.

Green. That’s what she noticed first. But that green must be attached to something, and as they draw closer, she sees that _something_ to be mountains. As the ship slowly draws nearer and nearer the distant coastline, more of the fog burns away, giving Elwing a better view of what looms out of the west. As she gets a better idea of just what it is she’s looking at, something in her goes cold, though she’s not entirely certain as to why. It’s not a coldness she would associate with foreboding and anxiety. It’s just—

The whisper is a little louder, now. That might be it.

Any thought that Elwing might have had of this being some forgotten island out in the distant west of the Sea, however briefly it might have been entertained, has been discarded entirely. The closer they come, the more Elwing can see, and what she sees stretches out north and south from her vantage point, passing far beyond the limit of what her eyes can see. She spies exactly one island somewhat to the north of them, a great forested thing looming out of the water like the head of one of the Onodrim, if the Onodrim ever grew so large as to be capable of plucking the ship in which Elwing stands out of the water in one massive hand. Elwing sees one island, one island only, and that only confirms what she thinks she already knew.

The Undying Lands.

The mountains soar away towards the roof of the sky, densely forested until the greenery of vegetation breaks away in favor of peaks of pure-white, unblemished snow. In only one place does Elwing see any break in these mountains, and as it turns out, that place just happens to be where that pinprick of light has been shining from all this time. She can make out a glimpse of a lush, temperate land beyond the mountains, but though there is a cleft in the mountains, a hill stands in the middle of it, blocking her view. The light shines from the pinnacle of a tall tower, and surrounding that tower, there is a city of harsh angles and gleaming stone.

Elwing has heard enough of the tales to guess at what that city is: the home of the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands. The others might gasp in awe and stare, but Elwing grits her teeth and looks away. She does not want it, not so much as a single stone, in her sight.

The Undying Lands. Having deprived herself of the sight, Elwing can think more clearly regarding the _whole_. She sucks in a wobbly breath that does not seem to put nearly enough air in her lungs. It’s likely all she will manage for a while, though, so she keeps on sucking in those wobbly breaths. At least with _some_ air in her lungs, she can think.

She… she really did not think this a place they would ever see. It must be obvious by now, Elwing’s skepticism, but it bears repeating: she really thought that they would be turned aside, or else killed. The Rodyn have made it very clear what they think of anyone who is not already a part of the Undying Lands entering their domains. Elwing _has_ heard tales of all of the mariners Turgon sent into the west seeking aid and seeking pardon, and the fates that befell them. She did not think that their fate would be any kinder— _certainly_ , she’d not thought that they would be able to draw so close as to lay eyes on the place.

It feels like a trap. Elwing can summon no joy into her heart; this all feels like a trap. She tries to tell herself that it is not so, that her mind is only dredging up fears where none are needed. She tries to tell herself that the Rodyn are in no need of traps that let the trapped draw in so close, that surely any trap would have caught them long ago. She tries to tell herself so many things.

If it’s not a trap…

If it’s not a trap, Elwing does not know what she will do, beyond coming ashore. She _will_ be coming ashore, for even if the Rodyn have pledged to kill any whom they do not want in their lands, that is an empty threat to one for whom death holds no horror. Eärendil will certainly be going ashore as well, and whatever might be between them, it would not… it would not be right to let him go ashore alone, would not be right to let him go to face the unbridled wrath of the Rodyn alone.

Elwing will go ashore. She does not know what she will do next. After all, she had never thought she would ever have to make such a choice.

-

Of everything Elwing had expected, she had not expected to be left on the shore alone.

She likely should have, she supposes. Eärendil’s goal has always been to go before the Rodyn and beg for their aid, and to do that, he would have to go seeking the very heart of their forbidden lands. He would have to pass through the city of the Ñoldor. He would have to go to a place where Elwing refuses to follow him.

(Eärendil does not even seem to have _wished_ for Elwing to follow him. He made such a noise about how he needed to face the Rodyn alone, Elwing cannot help but think that he expects to be smitten before he can even open his mouth.)

And it is ridiculous to split hairs about being left alone, anyways. Elwing has been alone for so often, and for so long, in places far more dangerous than this. The Undying Lands are supposed to be free of all peril (Except when they aren’t, but Morgoth and Fëanor, the villains who introduced peril to safe lands, will never be permitted to set foot here again). There is no safer place to be left alone, and Elwing is no stranger to it, to balk at being left in its care. She should have expected this. She should never have been surprised by this. She should take no offense at this.

Should, should, should. Should not, should not, should not. Why is it that her life is always dominated by these things? Elwing thinks that she would like to leave them behind.

Elwing takes a long, hard look at the city of the Ñoldor. She would rather not, but she thinks she should know well the sight of that place whose precincts she refuses to cross. At least it gives her something to avoid, as she decides where to go.

The city is no more pleasing to look upon than it was at first glance. It is well-constructed, the most well-put-together place she has ever seen in her life, but the angles are harsh and unforgiving, so sharp that she can’t help but think that if something _did_ compel her to pay Tirion upon Túna a visit, what would likely happen is that she would cut every exposed inch of skin on her body on the angles of the buildings where the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands somehow manage to live. Elwing does not think that Eärendil will have as pleasing a time there as he seems to think he will, if pleasure even enters into his considerations at all as he makes his long, weary way west into the heart of the Undying Lands.

She will not need to know whether or not _she_ would have a pleasant time in the city of the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands. Elwing knows she would never have enjoyed it, but she will never need to test how much she would not have enjoyed it. Even if all the Rodyn summoned her to their court, if it involved passing through the cleft in the mountains, Elwing would not do it. The Rodyn have done nothing for Elwing, and Elwing sees no reason why she should heed any calls they make to her. Even a summon to the Houses of the Dead, after her own death, might well be ignored, if her spirit had to make its way through Tirion first.

Now, north or south? Elwing thinks she can see something far on the northern horizon, clinging to the shore. It might be a city. Maybe. If it is a city, it is one far, _far_ away, but if it’s what she thinks it is…

Elwing feels something strange bubbling in her chest, though she cannot guess as to its exact nature. Anticipation, or terror, or terrified anticipation, perhaps. The third option sounds most likely. It sounds the most likely, when Elwing considers what she will find in that city, once she manages to get there.

Her stomach twinges painfully, and yes, _food_ is what she will find there. Food, any amount of food. Elwing considers the amount of food she might be able to enjoy in a peaceful land such as this, and her heart constricts in a sensation she unfortunately can name all too easily. She does not want that filling her up while she has to walk. She does not want her filling that up while she still has to breathe.

Elwing follows the shore north, and does not look back even once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” (The Lost Road 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Onodrim** —the Sindarin name given to the Ents (Sindarin) (singular: Onod)  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Hunger]

Anor has begun to sink behind the mountains, and Elwing is still walking. The city seems to have grown no closer, though with the light starting to fade, the lights shining in the north have grown brighter—lamps lit and fires lit, Elwing can only suppose. Those lights are varied in hue, twinkling like stars of red and blue and gold and silver and purple far off in the north, a clarion call that Elwing has been pursuing for hours on end already, and will pursue for as long as it takes for her to stumble upon the boundary edges of that place, even if by such a time she is so exhausted that she must crawl on hands and knees, clawing at the sand for purchase and momentum.

With each hour that passes, the pain in her stomach grows increasingly intense. Elwing does not think she is at the point of fainting, not yet; her vision is still clear, and her head does not spin. Even with the blood of Men in her veins, diluting the blood of Edhil and Ainur, her tolerance for the effects of hunger on her body is enough that she can go a good while longer than this without hunger taking a toll on her body hard enough to force her to stop moving, though those hours will doubtless not be pleasant.

She doesn’t… She really doesn’t think…

Part of never believing that she would come to stand on the earth of the Undying Lands, even if she has clung all this time to its outermost shore, is that Elwing never believed she would be able to see any of the settlements of the Undying Lands. She never believed she would lay eyes upon the Lindar, those among the many clans of the Nelyar who at last made the journey over the water to come to these hallowed, forbidden lands. She never believed she would meet with any among these distant kin of hers. She never believed she could ever get this far.

But she has gotten this far, and Elwing is heading towards that meeting as fast her feet can carry her, the sand constantly sinking in between her toes, regardless of the fact that she never expected it to happen. She never expected it to happen, and thus, she has never even considered how she would handle such a meeting. It’s such a ridiculous thing to worry about, _here_ , at this point, but here she is, thinking about it.

Elwing rolls her eyes as she thinks about the likely language barrier. She has heard that the Lindar of the Undying Lands speak a dialect of Quenya somewhat closer to something like Sindarin than the dialect the Ñoldor speak, but that is just a tale she has been told and she does not know if it’s true, and even if it is true, somewhat closer to Sindarin is not Sindarin. The two languages are likely so different that Elwing would be lucky to understand a handful of words being said to her by a Lindarin speaker. Never before has Elwing wished that she had taken it upon herself to learn Quenya in the Lisgardh—on most days, she merely tolerated the Gondolindrim speaking the language in the camp founded by _her_ people, and not always with good grace, at that—but now, _now_ , she’s seeing some short-sightedness in that decision, and it’s such a ridiculous thing to worry about on top of everything _else_ that has ever happened to her, and here she is, worrying about it anyways.

The language barrier is something that can be surmounted in time—perhaps not even all that much time, if there are some among the Lindar whom Elwing first meets who are very gifted with languages, and perhaps somewhere as close as gifted as her at discerning the thoughts of others without needing to hear those thoughts expressed aloud. She might even allow some of them ingress into her mind to help facilitate the process. That will be easier now that she is on the land and no longer surrounded on all sides by Sea, for now that her feet touch sand instead of the wood of the ship, for with solid earth to serve as an anchor, the song that radiates from the Sea is no longer so overpowering that Elwing must keep her mind shut to all outside influences at all times. The language barrier is something that can be surmounted, and in fact might be something that gives Elwing some relief, for the amount of time in which no one knows what to say to her that she will even be able to understand will give her some time to…

Elwing doesn’t even know, not really. Give her time to grow accustomed to her surroundings, perhaps. She will need that, she has no doubt, for she has heard some things about the city of the Lindar—the Exiles are rightly too shamed to speak much of the site of such wanton slaughter—and she knows the city to be, well, _large_. The camp in the Lisgardh was large, as well, but this will be something else. Even as depopulated as it might have become after the first of the Kinslayings, it will be a massive city with more people in it than Elwing has ever known in her life. She knows herself well enough to know that she will need time to become accustomed to that, if she even can become accustomed to it.

(The idea of being in a crowd again does not sound entirely welcome to her. These will be strangers, these will be people who will have no idea of what has transpired in the Lisgardh, not until or if she tells them. How can they judge her and find her lacking, for everything she lost, if they do not even know what she has lost? The idea of going among people who have no idea of her past sounds like something close to a dream come true, but not all dreams are pleasant, and she knows what paths this dream-come-true must tread: she must tell them the truth of all that has gone on, must apprise them of what has been going on in Ennor while they have struggled to rebuild the peace they once enjoyed. So many strangers, so many strangers who have had no part in the wars rocking Beleriand, and they will be able to judge her actions and find them wanting, as they must, but they have had no part ni the wars of Beleriand, and she does not want those who have been sheltered from those wars judging her actions, she does not want it, not at all.)

What… what will they think, when they learn of how Elwing came to be here? The Rodyn prohibit the arrival on the shores of the Undying Lands any child of this earth whom they have not given their express consent to come here. There is a ban against the Exiles, barring Eärendil from coming here, and there is a ban barring all those with the blood of Men in their veins, which strikes against Elwing as well as Eärendil. The storms that wrecked the ships of those mariners from Gondolin destroyed the boats of Sindarin mariners as surely as they did Ñoldorin mariners. Though the Sindar have offered the Rodyn no direct insult that Elwing can name, it would seem that they are barred as well—perhaps the Rodyn are offended by the fact that the Sindar did not agree to come to the Undying Lands when the offer was made to them, but Elwing _hopes_ that that would not be enough by itself to anger them enough to murder Sindarin mariners seeking them out for help.

(She might find herself being too generous in her interpretation of the Rodyn’s behavior. The Doom of the Ñoldor falls upon those Exiles born in Beleriand, as well as those who shed blood at the city of the Lindar. Elwing would not be at all surprised to learn that if the wrath of the Rodyn fell upon the Sindar for refusing to journey all the way to the Undying Lands, in spite of the fact that their lord had gone missing, that wrath could easily have fallen upon the descendants of those same Sindar, who were never given the choice in the first place. It might well be that she is being too generous. But death holds no horror for Elwing any longer, especially not when she knows that in time, she will walk amongst living lands once more.)

The Lindar refused to disobey the edicts of the Rodyn when pressed towards such a path by the Ñoldor. The Lindar have ever been obedient to all the edicts of the Rodyn—at least, if there has been any disobedience, it came after the Ñoldor murdered many of their number for refusing to aid them in their own disobedience, and to Elwing’s mind, she is not certain she really wants to credit that they would suddenly become disobedient after something like _that_. As far as Elwing knows, the Lindar have been obedient to the edicts of the Rodyn, and thus, Elwing cannot know how they will respond when they learn who she is, and how it is that she came to be here.

What will they do, when they learn that this stranger who has come among them is only here on account of her disobedience against the Rodyn? What will they do when they learn that they have a fugitive among them? Elwing has already decided that she has no desire ever to pass through the city of the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands, but could it be that she could be forced through that city, dragged through it into the heart of the Undying Lands, dragged before the Rodyn to be forced to submit to their judgment?

Elwing does not know how she could fight against that, and hope to win. Her body has never felt so weak as it does now, when walking is becoming more of an effort with each step she takes, and she is feeling the loss of the Silmaril more keenly than ever before, feeling more keenly than ever before the loss of its soothing song while she marches straight into the unknown, marches straight into the maybe-threatening unknown. If she meets these distant kin for the first time, only for them to treat her as a criminal to be detained and handed over immediately to those who would judge her case, that would be… Well, it would be in line with the general levels of luck that Elwing has experienced in her life, once her sudden discovery of her ability to change her shape is factored out. It would be in line with how her luck has tended to run in her life, but Elwing would still be disappointed by it.

She will find out what sort of reception is hers when she comes across the Lindar. Now, how is it that she will introduce herself to them?

Elwing soon has occasion to find out how she would introduce herself to them. It… It also happens to be in line with how things have gone in her life. Namely, that she does not have nearly as much time to prepare herself as she would have liked, and she has no idea what to say, so she says nothing at all.

The shore has turned to tall, rolling dunes of sand at this part, inclining towards the Sea at a gentle, sloping angle. The dunes are such that there have been points, many points, at which Elwing can see very little around her, at least when it comes to what is east of her. In the distance, the mountains loom so large and so dark that she does not think that even the advent of cloudy, lightless midnight would be enough to erase them totally from her sight. But as regards to east, there is little she can see, unless she descends the dunes and goes exploring to see what lies in the dips.

There is… there is light coming from one of the dips. It’s not any sort of strange effect of Anor sinking westward over mountains, Elwing thinks; she might not be used to such, might be used instead to watching Anor sink into water, so much so that watching it sink over mountains for the first time in her life might make her eyes play tricks on her, but in this case, she does not think that that is what’s happening. A light has been lit in one of the depressions in the dunes, and though the wind might be entirely too high for Elwing to make out any sounds that come from that depression, she can guess well enough what awaits her there.

There is something rattling in Elwing’s throat. She thinks it might be a scream. She does not wish to scream, for if there are Lindar down in that depression in the dunes (she really does hope it’s not Mínil or Ñoldor; the former might be merely disappointing, but the latter would be actively infuriating, especially as her _first_ encounter with the Edhil of the Undying Lands), she does not wish for that to be how they first become acquainted with them. Elwing understands well enough the importance of first impressions to not want her distant kin’s first impression of her to be as a screaming lunatic. She sucks in a few jagged breaths, so harsh and so cutting that they sear her lungs like a heated knife as she sucks them in, and walks forward on unsteady legs.

Soon, she can make out not just light, but shadows bobbing and flickering around that light. She comes to the edge of the incline over the depression, and stops, staring down.

A fire has been lit from what looks like driftwood, for the flames that dance and cast their reflections on the wall of the dune are a bluish-lavender the color of periwinkles. The bonfire is large enough that that deceptively soothing color looks like a place where Elwing could lay herself down, though she knows she would realize the mistake the moment her hair caught the flames. (Still, exhaustion has come upon her all at once like a strike from a sword, and she would like somewhere to lay herself down.) Her eyes are drawn first to a pile of shells, clams and mussels, her stomach growling so tremendously that she’s surprised it does not draw the attention of every last person sitting around that bonfire.

For there are people sitting around the bonfire. At first, Elwing thinks there are six, three men and three women, but a fourth woman emerges from the shadow of one of the men, and no, there are seven. Elwing drinks in the sight of them with an emotion adjacent to awe unfurling in her chest, trying to push out everything else she might have felt, though there is still a scream rattling around, and that scream has taken on a timbre closer to distress than anything else.

They all have dark hair like hers, though in the failing light and the somewhat distorting quality of the firelight, it’s hard to tell if all of their hair is the same night-black shade as Elwing’s, or if perhaps some of them have brown hair instead. Their skin varies in hue from a shade that looks like it might be nearly as pale as Elwing’s, though visibly dotted with freckles, to one whose skin seems to be the same shade of dark as their hair—though, again, the firelight could well be distorting her perceptions. Some of their eyes shine with the light of dead trees, but some of their eyes look more like the eyes of the Iathrim and Gondolindrim living in the Lisgardh, at least before Elwing brought the Silmaril to bear and everyone’s eyes began to shine with that reflected light, instead. They seem to have been sitting there for some time, for alongside the pile of empty clam and mussel shells, Elwing can see empty bottles scattered around the group, as well as blankets and cloaks. This close, the wind is no longer so mighty as to prevent their easy, unhurried chatter from drifting up to Elwing’s ears—a language almost entirely unknown to her, but Elwing is not so deaf to tone as to not guess what it is these beachgoers are speaking of, so relaxed and so unwary of their surroundings.

So. Not Mínil, for every tale Elwing has heard of the Mínil speaks of their astonishingly golden hair, and Elwing sees not so much as a strand of that here. Elwing cannot tell just from looking at them if they are Lindar or Ñoldor, for the one thing that could reliably differentiate between the two of them is hair like starlit silver, and she sees not a single strand of _that_ here, either. She wants to believe that they are Lindar. The Ñoldor of this place, having never experienced such the overwhelmingly humbling events of being forced to flee the ruins of their lost kingdoms, must be so extraordinarily arrogant that she would be able to see it in their faces immediately, however obscured it might be by firelight and shadows.

She wants to believe that they are Lindar, but now that Elwing looks down upon them, they feel as far away from her as the Rodyn must be. The distance is not a thing of location, but of every _other_ factor that could cause distance. It would be unfair to say that these people have never known peril, for the ones whose eyes shine with a light that the fire cannot account for must once have walked on sands stained red with the blood of their kinsmen. It would be unfair to say that these people have never known peril or grief, but those things have only come to touch them but once, and then left them alone and given them enough space to recover from the blow and at least _try_ to rebuild the bliss that was stolen from them. Elwing does not have even the slightest idea of what to do about people who look as if they have never spent years and decades dreaming about every peril that waits beyond the borders of their home for them to stray out of sight of those who could protect them, so that they can be dragged off into the blind night and slain. Elwing does not know what to do about people who can wander so far from what security is afforded by the settlement they call their home without even a dagger, let alone a sword or a spear. Elwing does not know what to do about people who look as though they have never missed a meal in all their lives.

What to do, what to do…

Elwing never gets the chance to decide what to do about a first move. While she’s still struggling to decide for herself how to make her presence known, one of the women in the group, a tall, tanned one with braided hair and eyes that shine in the growing dark like lamps, looks up, her eyes immediately riveted on what must seem to her like a shadow at the crest of the dune, though considering how quickly the woman’s eyes find hers, perhaps there is something more to it than that.

As it stands, the woman calls out cheerily to Elwing, gesturing languidly with one large, long-fingered hand, the light before her hand passing through her open fingers and carving shadows deep into the sand behind her. The meaning of the gesture is clear enough, but the words are incomprehensible to her, and she remains frozen at the crest of the dune, staring down.

It’s not just that the words are incomprehensible to Elwing. Sure enough, she cannot make heads or tails of them, and she begins to think that the tales she heard of the Lindar’s language being more intelligible to speakers of Sindarin were just complete fabrications, but really, there is more to it than that. It’s that she can’t help but get caught up on how relaxed they all still are, in spite of the fact that a stranger has suddenly appeared among them, in spite of the fact that a figure they have never before seen has appeared on the boundaries of their merriment, and not a single one of them has a weapon on them deadlier than their fists or their feet or their teeth. Elwing can guess easily enough as to the reason why—her mind still works, even if her body is determined to rebel. She can guess well enough the reason why, but still, this complete and obvious lack of fear or panic, or even _misgivings_ at the sight of a stranger is more incomprehensible to her than even the language the woman spoke. It makes logical sense to her, and at the same time, emotionally, it makes no sense at all. The disconnect between the two cuts like a blunt knife.

Elwing stares down in silence as every last pair of eyes settles upon her face. She keeps waiting for a miasma of unease to rise up to greet her, the already unpleasant scent of sweat mingled with fear and something else behind it, an emotion more primal even than fear, though it might certainly be a relative of it—its progenitor, perhaps. She keeps waiting for it, and it never comes. Some of them look a little confused by her persistent silence, but fear never makes a mockery of their fair faces.

Eventually, they begin to confer against themselves, including the woman who first called out, though her eyes never leave Elwing’s fear. The general tone of their conversation follows quite clearly the confusion she sensed among them earlier, never turning towards tension for even a moment. Of all of this, Elwing hears something she understands perhaps thrice, and always the same word: ‘eyes.’

You know, Elwing never did think that the reflected light of the Silmaril in her eyes was _that_ similar to the light in the eyes of the Lechind, had never thought that the light that grew up in her eyes after long enough wearing the Silmaril was that similar to the light shining in, say, Lady Idril’s eyes before she went away. She had never thought the two types of light were that similar, but perhaps she is wrong. Perhaps it’s just that she’s standing at something of a remove from these seven Edhil, and the light is more difficult to differentiate at a distance. Perhaps that is it. Elwing doesn’t really know how she might feel about the fact that the light she bears in her eyes is so similar as the light of those dead things that the Exiles so revere. She hopes that whatever else might be said, _this_ , at least, is not questioned too closely.

At last, the group seems to come to some sort of conclusion, and the woman who first called out to Elwing calls out to her again.

“Hello,” she calls out. “Have you been traveling long?”

Relief washes over Elwing like a sudden wave of warm water at the sound of Sindarin greeting her ears. Mithrim Sindarin and not Iathrim Sindarin, it must be said, but those two dialects are not so different that Elwing could seriously expect not to be able to communicate with them—Mithrim Sindarin does have more than a few words that Elwing does not know there to be any equivalent of in Iathrim Sindarin, but those words can more likely than not be avoided, she can actually communicate with these people, and her fears regarding having to explain herself more quickly seem rather less important now that she does not have to share the night with people whom she cannot communicate with. She sucks in a deep breath, and calls out to them in turn, her voice sounding so faint to her own ears that she’s uncertain whether she’ll be able to make it carry over the wind: “Longer than you can know.”

“Why don’t you come down here, and tell us all about it?”

-

Elwing knows very little about how the Houses of the Dead works, but she soon learns from these seven a little bit of it, enough to learn that they think her origins and her means of coming to this land something entirely other than what it was. She had never thought very hard about the amount of time it took for the dead to come to a point where they could leave the Houses of the Dead, though if Elwing was asked to give a general description to the timeline she thought was appropriate, she would have named it a span of many, _many_ years that anyone who died would have to wait in those halls before being allowed out into the land of the living again.

As it turns out, for many, it is a span of many, many years, depending on their deeds, the circumstances of their death, and the sort of care or punishment they require before returning to the lands of the living. But for some, the time they require can be counted in years rather than in decades or centuries, or sometimes (if only in extreme cases) even _months_ instead of years. If someone has led a life in which they have done no violence to others, if they have led a life in which they have not rebelled against the Valar, and if they are apparently resilient against what trauma might be inflicted by the cause of their death, they can be released from the Houses of the Dead into the living world in a very short amount of time, indeed.

(Elwing does not dare to hope that her family are here already. She does not dare to hope. Even if they are, the chances that she will be allowed to see them before the Rodyn strike her down and send her spirit to the Houses of the Dead are minimal. And given that the Lord of those halls will no doubt judge her as having been disobedient against the Rodyn, it will no doubt be a long time before she is allowed to leave the Houses of the Dead again. She does not dare to hope. That she is here at all has taught her that not all hopes in the world are vain, but as regards to this, Elwing thinks that hope will only hurt her. Better not to hope for anything at all, where this is concerned.)

They are Lindar, these seven, so at least Elwing does not have to deal with the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands, so soon after her arrival. They are Lindar, and at first, every single one of them thinks her to be newly returned to life from the Houses of the Dead.

That… that would be quite convenient, if Elwing thought that she had any chance at all of keeping up such a ruse. That would be quite convenient, if Elwing had any inclination to create or keep up such a ruse. She does not desire to create such a ruse, she does not desire to keep up such a ruse, and thus, what might have been convenient instead becomes quite inconvenient.

(It is forbidden for her to be here, having come here in such a manner. She knows that. She knows it perfectly well. But she has no intention of hiding behind a lie. If the Rodyn wish to kill her, let them. She would have died just as surely in Ennor, sooner or later, given that there is no power in all of Ennor sufficient to cast Morgoth down from his fastness far in the north. She would always have died eventually, and she will not hide. Let the Rodyn know exactly where to find her, if they do indeed resolve to slay her. Let all the world know who she is, and why the Rodyn wish to strike her down.)

It takes some time to convince the Lindar she has stumbled upon that she has not come to them from the Houses of the Dead. The confusion that Elwing saw paint itself so starkly on their faces when one of their number first called out to her, only to receive no reply, returns to their faces, and deepens and deepens and deepens as Elwing tries to convince them that as close as she has come to dying, she has never been dragged into its embrace, that she did not come to the Undying Lands by such a route. They do not want to believe it, do not want to believe that any ship setting sail from the shores of Ennor could have ever hoped to make it this far west, past all of the obstacles put in the way of mariners by the Rodyn.

Of course they do not want to believe it. These people have not lived in a world where a mortal Man was able to defy an enchantment put in place by one of the Ainur without even realizing that he was doing something of such dire import. They have never known such things. They have never known of the weaknesses of defenses put in place by the Ainur.

Eventually, though, it becomes clear to the Lindar that Elwing has absolutely no familiarity with the Undying Lands beyond the small stretch of coastline she has spent many hours this day walking north up, trying to make her way to the city of the Lindar, which considering that those released from the Houses of the Dead tend to be released either just outside of those halls, or in a region of the Undying Lands known as the gardens of Lórien, strains credulity entirely too far. (Elwing keeps expecting to run up against accusations of lying. They never come. Perhaps one of the party is rooting around in her mind while Elwing is distracted by questions posed by the other six, but even considering the possibly superior abilities of the Lechind, she can’t help but think she would have _felt_ something. These people are… They are utterly without the caution that the Edhil of Beleriand had learned to take into their hearts as if it has always been a part of them, as necessary in breathing. They also seem entirely too trusting, by the standards Elwing has learned to hold up as normal. They would never have survived the wars of Beleriand. They should all be grateful that they have never had to try.) She has never been into the heartlands of the Undying Lands, and someone returned from the Houses of the Dead would have needed to travel through those to make their way out here.

Elwing can pinpoint the exact moment that realization hits each one of the Lindar who have been quizzing her about her journey and how it is she came to be sharing their fire on this night. It’s easy to pinpoint the moment, because it’s the moment when each of their faces freeze in expressions of varying disbelief, awe, and something close to horror. She does not think anyone has ever looked at her in such a manner before.

It is only after she has managed to convince all seven of them that she came to the Undying Lands via a ship sailing out of Ennor that it finally occurs to any of them to ask her her name, and who her family was. Elwing wonders if this is the point at which someone will finally refuse to believe her when she speaks the truth—surely, these strangers would not so easily believe that she is the descendant of Elu Thingol, that she is kin to their own king, surely they would think that too bizarre a coincidence to be believed so easily. She tells them anyways, seeing no way around it, and feeling no desire to try to find a way at all. Even if she tried to pass herself off as a stranger, she can summon no pseudonym to her mouth, not readily, and her true identity would surely become known once the Rodyn came for her.

Still, Elwing expects to run up against skepticism at this point. Surely, _surely_ these people must become skeptical and _stay_ skeptical at some point. Surely, there must be a point where it becomes so difficult to convince them of the truth of a statement without material proof that it might as well become completely impossible to convince them at all.

If that point exists at all, Elwing does not know how to come to it. She tells them who she is, tells them her name and the name of her parents and paternal grandparents and the forefather and foremother of her paternal family line, and it does not seem to occur to a single one of them that she could be lying. She sees no trace of that in their faces, and no trace comes out in their voices. All she sees is their eyes widening, their mouths falling open, one of them starting to fidget with the hem of his shirt like with the air of a man who knows that if he does not occupy his hands with some sort of task, they will only do damage to the body they belong to.

For a long time, they are all silent, as silent as Elwing was when the woman with the braided hair first called out to her. What dominates in this silence is the howling of the wind far overhead, racing over the crest of the dune. What dominates in this silence is the crashing of the Sea against the sand a good one hundred feet east. Honestly, the wind and the Sea make mockery of all eight of them, jeering at them for their inability to string together anything intelligent.

Then, at last, the woman with the braided hair, she who called out to Elwing first of all of them, nods sharply and points at two of the men. “You two should return home now, and tell them of what the lady has told us. The king will want to know of this sooner, rather than later.”

Before Elwing can process that, the two men in question spring to their feet and hurry down to the shore, where Elwing realizes for the first time there are a few small boats dragged up onto the sand. She stares after them as they start to drag the boat out back out into the water, hands fisted in her skirt to hide the way they wish to shake.

A hand lights on her arm, and she nearly jumps. When she looks back, the woman with the braided hair is leaning over, smiling in a fashion that she thinks is meant to be encouraging, though it looks entirely too frazzled to achieve that convincingly. “I have failed to introduce myself properly; I must apologize, and rectify that error. My name is Lerina; I am a daughter of Alqualondë, to the north of here.” Her smile falters slightly. “My lady, I… No one here can force you to accompany us, nor would we try. But I do ask that in the morning, you accompany us back to Alqualondë. You will find your kinsmen there, and I think that they will be eager to hear your tale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lechind** —'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Ñoldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Ñoldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (singular: Lachend) (Sindarin)  
>  **Lindar** —‘Singers’; the clan name the Nelyar gave themselves (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. The Lindar (later known to outsiders as the Teleri) split into several groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Mínil** —the Sindarin variant of Quenya ‘Minyar’, the name the Vanyar applied to themselves (singular: Miniel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Nelyar** —‘Thirds’, the third clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen, who were named for Enel and Enelyë, the former of whom was the third Elf to awaken (Singular: Nelya) (Adjectival form: Nelyarin). The clan name they gave themselves was ‘Lindar’, meaning ‘Singers’ (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. During the Great March, they were dubbed the Teleri, ‘those at the end of the line, the hindmost’, for they were the last to leave Cuiviénen, and often lagged behind. This clan encompasses many different groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (Which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	16. Chapter Sixteen

After a small supper of the provisions that the Lindar had taken with them on what Elwing understands to be a pleasure trip (such a strange thing, to a child of the Lisgardh, though she supposes that if she could have called herself a child of Doriath instead, she might have understood it a bit better), Elwing falls asleep on a soft, linen blanket that one of her companions has given up in favor of sleeping on their cloak. She sleeps without dreams, and for that she is grateful, for sleeping without dreams means that she will carry no potentially unsettling dreams into the waking world with her, when she will be speeding towards a conclusion that already unsettles her so much.

Elwing wakes to the sound of her stomach grumbling in her ear—the group of Lindar she happened upon apparently only meant to spend one night here, supplementing the provisions they brought with her with whatever mussels and clams they could find on the shore, and the remaining provisions had to be split into smaller portions than originally planned when this new person came among them. She has not complained. She does not intend to complain. She did not even have to ask for food; they just gave it to her. But it was not enough to seal up the hole in the pit of her stomach, and it’s difficult to watch the other Edhil wake up from their own, rather diminished supper, and behave as though it is no hardship upon them at all.

Elwing has had to watch many things that are difficult for her. Elwing has had to do many things that are difficult for her, for many different reasons. She will bear this. It is far from the worst.

Likewise, she will bear having to get back out onto the Sea, after having borrowed a comb off of one of her companions to try to do anything with her curly dark hair, anything at all. (If there is any wind at all, and considering that these are Lindar and this is the Undying Lands, there most likely will be, the Falathrim have always had at least a gentle breeze when they have needed one, her hair will no doubt look even worse by the time they reach their destination. She’s trying to do something with it here, anyways.) This is the quickest way to reach the city of the Lindar, Alqualondë (she is trying to make that fit in Sindarin; Swanhaven, Swanhaven, she thinks that Alphlond or Alphalond might work, though she is not sure on that point, not entirely), for otherwise it would be walking further north up the shoreline, and her companions, those among them who can speak any dialect of Sindarin, assure her that that would take several days more. By Sea is quicker. By Sea will see them there within the day, depending on whether or not the wind favors them.

Within the day. Such a vague declaration, which makes Elwing think that the speed of travel depends very much upon the way the wind does or does not favor them. (She wonders whether it will still be ‘within the day’ if there is no wind at all, if her companions are forced to make use of the oars she has seen pulled into the boat for now. She wonders if ‘within the day’ might not turn into something more closely resembling ‘within the day _tomorrow_.’ She wonders how she would care for that, when food is dwindling and supper would more likely than not be the fish she has been eating for she has long since stopped counting, ever since she landed on Eärendil’s ship. She will… She will bear it. She has no choice. She is not a child to be throwing a tantrum over such things, and even if there is not a single, solitary soul in the Undying Lands who would recognize what little authority is hers, she is still a queen, and as far as behavior goes, there are certain things expected of her. Not complaining about meager meals is one of them.)

Elwing sits in a seat in the boat that she suspects might have been reserved for Lerina herself, for Lerina spends much of the rest of the day pacing up and down the length of the deck, and Elwing does not see any place where she might be able to sit down, unless she wants to sit down on the deck itself. The Sea is brighter here, though Elwing does not know why. Where the turbulent waters near the shores of the Lisgardh have always been a fulminating grayish-blue, though the waters near the shores of this stretch of the Undying Lands are rough at times as well, they are also the dazzling, twinkling blue Elwing isn’t used to see until she turns her gaze to the water furthers out, where the harsh tides and currents are further beneath the surface, and the water can just swirl and slosh gently without having to worry about crashing against any shoreline. Just as the green on the mountains is brighter than any green of vegetation that Elwing has ever seen, the blue of the Sea near the shore is brighter than Elwing has ever seen from the waters that lapped against her feet when she wandered the shoreline in the Lisgardh.

The colors are… She does not know why, does not know if her eyes are playing tricks or if her memories are already distorting, but the colors seem much brighter here than they did in Ennor. Perhaps that is fitting. The Undying Lands are where the Rodyn dwell, and the Rodyn are primeval forces of creation, just as much as they are the unseen rulers of this world. Elwing supposes it fitting that creation would seem more vital in a place where those primeval forces of creation make their home. She does not think that a dry, brown landscape with dull, grayish waters would have fit this place particularly well. She wonders how quickly she will become acclimated to it, whether she is allowed to remain in the Undying Lands without being struck down first, or once she has been released from the Houses of the Dead after the Rodyn have slain her. Elwing thinks that she _could_ become acclimated to it, for it isn’t as though the colors are not pleasing to her eyes. It’s just that she keeps looking at them, and being startled for just a moment, for she was expecting something duller to greet her eyes.

Perhaps, one day, she will grow accustomed to that. Perhaps one day, even her colors will match her vibrant surroundings. Perhaps a day will come when there is enough vitality within her that she would not seem so utterly, bizarrely out of place in such lands as these. Perhaps. Elwing does not think that to be her greatest concern, just now.

No, her greatest concern is Olwë and his queen (no one has told her the queen’s name, and Elwing does not know how to ask, only knows the creeping mortification already growing inside of her at the thought that she will have to ask this senior kinswoman of hers her name, possibly in front of quite a few people), and the meeting that will occur within the day, the meeting that Elwing honestly has not given a great deal of thought to before now.

She does not think overlong on the possibility that they will reject her, that they will refuse to believe her the descendant of Olwë’s older brother. That would honestly be the easiest outcome for Elwing, the easiest outcome for her to contend with, for it might require her to defend her claims to no avail, but it would not require her to explain all of the circumstances that have led to her arrival. It would not require her to flay herself open before strangers. It would not require her to drip death from her lips and pour desolation from her hands.

Elwing draws a deep breath, picking at the hem of the mantle that has been hung over her shoulders in an attempt to clothe her in some approximation of the way these Lindar think that a highborn lady should be dressed. Her fingernails scrape over the pearls sewn into the soft fabric, and she stops, fearful of damaging them. She sets her hands on her lap instead, and draws another deep breath.

She has already told the tale of the destruction of the Lisgardh once, and she survived it. She can survive it again. She can unravel the tale of her life to the destruction of Menegroth, can go past it to the woes of Beleriand that have conspired to put her family line in the positions they have been in over the preceding decades and centuries, can trace the lines that led Eärendil to take to the Sea, can pace the paths that led him to the Lisgardh in the first place, can even round the boundaries of the events that led up to Melian weaving her enchantments around the borders of her kingdom, to keep all their enemies away. She can tell those tales, can tell those tales, she can do it, no harm will come to her when she does it, it might feel like her heart is being rent in two by pinching hands, but that is only a trick of her own mind, it will not actually happen.

Elwing sucks in another breath, and wishes it would steady her as it ought to. She can do this. She will not falter. She will not fail. And if Olwë and his queen refuse to know her, if they refuse to believe that her blood is their blood and that they are kin to one another, if they turn her away as a stranger and a lying stranger at that, she’ll…

She’ll bear it. She’s been alone before. She has been attacked, she has been enveloped by the Sea. She has been abandoned and stolen from. She will bear this. It will be the least of what she has borne.

(She would like a place to call home. She would like a place to call home that she does not have to worry about being invaded or destroyed. She would like a place to call home where there are people who will claim her as one of their own. After all she has been through, she would like to have that, at least. She cannot have all of that, unless someone else is willing to give it to her. Elwing wishes that the things she wants were not so dependent on the goodwill and the cooperation of other people. But she knows all too well that she cannot have everything that she wants. She can have very little of what she wants.)

The day drags on, so uneventful and peaceful that Elwing finds herself waiting with increasing urgency for something ill to befall them. Nothing happens, and the longer that nothing happens, the more she expects the hull of the boat to catch on a hidden rock, or the wind to turn nasty, or a rogue wave to come upon them and smite the boat into a thousand splintering pieces, or an enemy ship to appear on the horizon, bows at the ready. Elwing has never even heard of the last of those things happening, for she has never heard of any evil things being able to remain on the surface of the Sea for long, if they will even take to the waters at all. None of the Lindar aboard this boat seem to realize what is passing through her mind, and the wind whistling through their ears deafens them to her increasingly harsh, ragged breaths. That is just as well. Let the first sign they have of Elwing’s distress be her body hitting the deck if she faints. Let her have the privacy she needs to gain control over her body once more.

The day drags on, and they do not pause to eat. Elwing’s stomach, ever in pain, has begun to cramp by the time Anor has begun to descend from its zenith at midday. Her body feels weak, but her mind is terribly clear. She is sorting the story into something she can tell, something that she hopes will actually make sense to the listener and will not tear too much of herself out with it. (It’s a phantom feeling, she knows. It’s not what actually happens when she tells the tale, she knows. But she still worries about it. She cannot help worrying about it.)

Around an hour after Anor has begun descending towards the mountains, Lerina comes to where Elwing sits, and bids her look out to the northwest of them. “There, my lady, the city has come into sight.”

Curiosity overcomes her, and Elwing looks to where Lerina is pointing. After a moment, all she _can_ do is look.

They have come around a bend in the coastline, and the mounds of sand and rock that had obstructed Elwing’s view before can no longer do any such thing. What before had been visible to her only as lights shining on the horizon, she can now make out as a city, a full, _sprawling_ city, nestled in rock and sand and crawling all the way down to the water itself.

It… it bears little resemblance to Tirion upon Túna. Elwing is glad of that, glad that at least this first settlement she sets foot in in Aman is not a place of harsh angles so sharp that they look able to cut without so much as the barest contact. Alqualondë does not look much like Tirion. It does not look like an aggressively orderly place, does not look as if it was planned by someone who would have an absolute fit if they found the blocks they had set down even a hair out of place when they came back to them at a later time. She is glad of that. A place like Tirion does not look like a very comfortable place to live, or even to dwell in temporarily.

Alqualondë looks like it was constructed in stages, by several different architects. There are a wealth of different building styles, though for the most part, they center around gently rounded, dome-shaped buildings. Elwing does not know the purpose for it, and is content to let that remain a mystery for the time being. She stares out at the city, its buildings painted in such a wide array of colors, aqua green and scarlet and golden and lavender and sunny orange and pink and powder blue and so on, that Elwing would swear these people have been allowed to all paint their houses themselves, without any input from any higher authorities whatsoever. (Perhaps they have. Perhaps such things are permitted in the Undying Lands. Perhaps such things would have been permitted in the Lisgardh, had there been enough paint.) She can make out the quays from the veritable forest of masts and sails, though she cannot see the bodies of the ships themselves. She goes a little cold when she looks at those quays, for she realizes that for a long moment, she was looking for hints of red. That was silly; surely they would have cleaned up all of the blood, for hygiene’s sake, if nothing else. But still, she was looking for it, and she has to force herself to stop.

Alqualondë is…

Elwing has never seen such a large settlement in her life. That would not be difficult, considering the limited number of settlements she _has_ seen in her life, but it’s larger than any settlement she has even _imagined_. She knows that Menegroth and Gondolin were both cities of absolutely massive size, but she has never really been able to properly imagine the scope of them. She’s never seen enough people at one time to even begin to fill them up, and thus, she keeps finding herself imagining a place that is an appropriate size to house the amount of people she has known in the Lisgardh, in spite of the fact that she knows that Gondolin and Menegroth would have needed to be so, _so_ much larger than that. Size is something Elwing has trouble with, sometimes. Immensity is something that to her seems to belong to the sky and the Sea, and the sky and the Sea alone. She rarely thinks of manmade settlements in such terms.

But Alqualondë is immense. It crawls up and down the mountainside, up and down the shoreline, as if it has been growing and growing and growing since it was first settled, as if it started to grow and never stopped, and Elwing supposes it _could_ , considering that there is nothing to stop the Lindar from having children and growing the size of their city, for there is no Angband here to spew out Orcs and goblins and dragons to come and slay them all, and the Kinslayers have all taken themselves to the other side of the Sea. When they arrive at the quays, Elwing wonders what will happen, if the people will spill from the buildings like bees from a hive, or if those hives will just buzz and buzz and buzz as she walks past.

Still. They are her people. The Lindar and the Iathrim are sundered cousins of the Nelyar. They are kin to her, and after all that has passed between the Lindar and the Ñoldor of the Undying Lands, Elwing hopes it is reasonable to expect that no Ñoldor dwell in Alqualondë any longer, if they ever did. Even if there are far too many of them for comfort, they should all be her own people. Elwing thinks it would be easier for her to grow accustomed to living in a massive, sprawling city of Lindar, than it would be for her to grow accustomed to living in even a small settlement consisting only of Ñoldor or even Mínil.

Now, now she must marshal her courage to speak to them, and hope that enough of them can understand the tongue she speaks for her tale to reach the ears it needs to. They should know what has become of their kin on the other side of the Sea. Everyone should know. Elwing does not hope, as Eärendil does, to sway the Rodyn to mercy, but it does occur to her that such things should be known to all the world, even if there is nothing in the end that can be done.

She will tell her tale, and hopefully the Rodyn will wait until after she is done to drag her off for judgment. It would be nice if she could get the whole tale out without the Rodyn attempting too strenuously to silence her.

By the time they reach the quays, the mountains to the west are gilded fiery orange and golden, and Elwing has been aware for a while that there are more than a few people gathered at the docks, awaiting the arrival of this boat. She has heard the susurrus carried on the breeze, distinguishable from the waves and the Song of Worldly Creation only because of the strange mix of languages Elwing can hear upon the breeze, a mix of Quenya and the language of the Lindar (so similar to Quenya, but as Elwing listens to more of it, she can discern some differences here and there), and mercifully, yet more Sindarin, almost entirely Mithrim Sindarin, though she can on occasion catch some snatches of pure Iathrim Sindarin. The Song of Worldly Creation has ever sung to Elwing in no language she could hope to understand, but she has always had the sense, at least, that it was singing to her in one language only. She never had the impression that the Song of the Ainur broke into several different tongues at different points in the melody.

Elwing tries not to stare too obviously at the quays as they draw near. Her curiosity grows more intense within her as the voices she hears on the wind seem to swell and increase with each passing half-hour, but at the same time, self-consciousness has come for her as well, and she does not want to seem like a gawking child. It might well be later that she won’t be able to help gawking. She could believe that. When in the heart of Alqualondë itself, she would not be at all surprised if she’s unable to help gawking. But as long as she has not even arrived, she’d like to maintain some semblance of her composure, some semblance of the dignity you would expect of an adult.

(None of them will understand the influence of her Mannish blood, she knows. None of these people have even seen a Man, unless there’s a large population of reembodied Sindar living in Alqualondë. They will hear her tell her years, and think her a child, she knows. That might be a problem. It might prove an obstacle. But if there are any who have come before her to this place, Sindar who survived long enough into the First Age to mark the passage of Men into Beleriand, and died after, and were released from the Houses of the Dead before Elwing set foot on the shores of the Undying Lands, might have carried tales to the Lindar regarding Men. It might still be difficult to convince the Lindar that she is an adult, in spite of her years, but if those she speaks to have any knowledge of Men, perhaps it will not be _that_ difficult.)

The…

When Elwing steps off of the boat onto a dock, she wishes for a moment that she _had_ been paying more attention to just how many people were gathering at the quays while the boat approached. As many people as she thought she could hear, the amount of people she actually _sees_ when she looks up from the dock are…

There are quite a lot more of them than she had thought there would be.

At least they aren’t staring at her in silence. As disconcerting as it is for Elwing to suddenly find herself in a large crowd, it would have been more disconcerting by far to find them all staring at her in silence, plainly waiting for her to speak. As it is, they’re all whispering or outright talking amongst themselves, almost all of them in Quenya or in the language of the Lindar, and those snippets of Sindarin Elwing can hear clinging to the edges of the general murmuring are so disjointed that she can barely make out more than a single word for each voice.

They all… they all look like Lindar to her, if the group of seven Elwing met last night are typical of the looks of the Lindar. She sees heads of dark hair and eyes of gray and blue and green and brown. She sees faces pale and faces dark, and she even sees a few heads of starlit silver interspersed with the black and the brown. She sees no hostility in any of their faces. Some of them look confused, some of them worried, some of them even fearful, but there are some who are smiling as well. No one makes a move towards Elwing, and for that, she is grateful. At least she’s being given the chance to drink in the sight of them first.

Then, Lerina is putting a hand on her shoulder and whispering in her ear. “There should be a carriage waiting nearby. Follow me; I’ll take you there.”

Suddenly, absurdly, Elwing is struck by the urge to tell her that she has never ridden in a carriage before. True enough, but not something you just _admit_ , especially not at a time like this. Oh, well. She’s heard enough about carriages not to be worried about riding in one. Especially not in a place like this. She can’t imagine that anything bad ever happens to people riding in carriages, not in a place like this.

As it turns out, carriages are dark, sheltered places, though the curtains over the carriage windows certainly help with that. (Elwing is grateful for the curtains. It will give her a way to peek out the windows at the city itself, without everyone around her being able to see too easily just how much she gawks.) Lerina has a few words for the driver before the carriage sets off, but she never gets into the carriage itself. Instead, she shuts the door behind Elwing, just before the carriage begins to move. Her expression as she does so suddenly grows somber, so somber that Elwing feels a stab of unease strike her chest, before dissipating ever so slightly when Lerina summons a smile for her.

In the end, the carriage moves too quickly for Elwing to get a good look at her surroundings as it heads on towards what she can only assume is the palace, even making use as she is of being able to push the curtain back just a hair, just enough to peer out into the city. Those colors that seemed vibrant from a far are no less so now that she is close; the variegated hue of the buildings they drive past are so bright that she can scarcely believe them real, for it seems to her that such shades have more of a place in her dreams than in her waking life.

What sort of lives can be led by the residents of a safe, peaceful land? What can you do, when you live a life where you know no peril, when you have the time to actually dream, and try to act out those dreams? What can you do, when you have the time, and the resources, and the freedom?

Elwing tries to imagine it for herself. Some of it seems terrible. But some of it seems wonderful as well.

Those imaginings fill up her sight, and she lets the curtains fall totally shut. Then, her stomach growls once more, and the visions dancing in her head are dead and gone. She sighs. One thing at a time. She must get through this first. She must face the Rodyn first. She must see if Olwë and his queen will even acknowledge her as kin, first. (If they don’t, if they do not, if she is to be denied some semblance of family even here— She keeps telling herself that she can bear it. She keeps telling herself that. She will go on telling herself that.)

When at last the carriage draws to a sudden stop, Elwing’s pulse has begun to pound so fiercely that she can feel it racing across the surface of her skin, all over her body. She feels nausea swarm her stomach, though it isn’t strong enough to override the pain that has always been there, the pain that threatens to rip her stomach to pieces. Elwing stands, and takes a deep breath, and the nausea passes, though her pulse is still pounding awfully hard, and a scream is bobbing in her throat again. She must be strong enough for this.

Elwing leaves the carriage without waiting for anyone to open the door for her (It won’t be until later, much later, that she will learn that most about her consider it more proper for her to wait, and even after learning that, it will be a while longer before the lesson really sinks in). The carriage has stopped outside of what looks like a large stable, though Elwing will admit that many of the buildings she sees when she looks around are strange to her. The massive structure off to the right, she assumes is the palace, but these smaller ones, she is less certain of. She has lived always in a cramped little house, and the fact that her house has multiple rooms and a maid who keeps those rooms clean means that she has lived in better conditions than nearly everyone else in the Lisgardh. She cannot imagine what it is like to be the master of such a titanic structure as the palace that stretches out before her eyes. She wonders if its masters ever waken in their beds and do not know for a moment just where they are, expecting instead to wake up by a campfire on the shores of Ennor. She wonders how many nights she will have like that, if she is allowed to stay in these lands, whenever it is that she has the leisure to sleep in a proper bed. She wonders if she will awaken and not know just where she is.

Elwing mills about the stretch of soft green grass between the stables and that palace, staring around at the smaller buildings, at the walls, eyes skating over the main building itself with its arches and towers and banners flapping jauntily in the wind. She pulls her borrowed mantle closer about her shoulders, wrapping it against herself like a shawl, wishing she had one of the shawls she had worn in the Lisgardh with her—the familiar smell and feel of it would have been more soothing, even if it was a threadbare, fraying thing.

Footsteps ring out, audible even over the wind, and Elwing looks up to see a tall man emerging from a side door in the palace and hurrying over towards her, only to stop short about twelve feet away. They stare at each other in a silence that feels to Elwing like the crack before the breaking of the world, when the One finally decides he is done with this marred creation of his. The scream that’s been bobbing in Elwing’s throat hardens and beats against the walls of her neck as he looks her up and down, mouth working but nothing ever coming out, staring at her the way one would stare at a wounded animal, uncertain of whether to come closer or back away, fearful of lashing claws and gnashing teeth at the same time that the desire to soothe the hurts becomes so overpowering that it sings in the blood like a fury.

He’s… he’s so very tall. She’d thought him such when she first saw him slamming that door shut behind him, and ten feet away, she has to crane her neck up to look into his strained, taut face. Hair like starlit silver, and eyes of silver, too. There’s… there’s something in the features of his face that looks familiar to Elwing. It should. Those features should look familiar to her. She’s seen them in other faces before, in the scattered, ragged remains of her kin. Her _closer_ kin than the Iathrim as a whole.

“They…” He tries to smile at her. He doesn’t quite manage it, but the warmth of a smile is in his eyes nonetheless. “They tell me your name is Elwing,” Olwë says to her.

Elwing nods silently. She doesn’t really know what to say to him. She wasn’t… she wasn’t really…

So many things she thought she was going to have to do, when she met him. So many things, and now, she doesn’t know what to do at all, because this… this isn’t… this isn’t, at _all_ …

She tries to breathe. It’s hard. It’s getting harder.

And Olwë tries to smile again, and fails again, his lips twitching like he’s trying not to scream, too. “You look… I gather you must look rather more like Melyanna, but there’s a little of him in your brow.” He falters. “And… and your eyes.”

They both have silver eyes. Thingol… Thingol must have had those as well. Elwing never thought about that. She never thought that there was something she could carry of him without needing to, needing to…

He inches closer towards her, stretching his hand out, fingers coming within inches of her elbow, but never quite touching. “Come inside, Elwing. You should… you should come inside.”

She follows after him, struggling to keep up with his quick, long-legged pace until he looks back and sees her having nearly to jog to keep up with him, and he slows his pace until it’s something that more closely matches Elwing’s own. Something in Elwing resents that, but something else tells her it’s silly to resent what is done for her benefit. It’s silly to resent when she still does not know what to make of any of this at all.

Elwing is not taken to any chamber, not immediately. She’s led through a veritable rabbits’ warren of hallways and corridors, lined with tapestries and portraits of such immense and obvious value that she hesitates even to breathe on them, fearful of doing damage. Outside a large, oaken door, there stands a tall woman, with pale-silvery hair and hands that twist at the front of her gown.

“Ránelindë,” Olwë calls out to her, waving his hand as if in greeting.

But Elwing knows instantly that this is not a _first_ meeting, and knows also that at least one mystery has been solved for her, while she’d not looked for an answer. In all the confusion, in all the, the… Well. At least she will not have to inquire of the queen what her _name_ is.

Ránelindë’s head snaps up at the sound of her husband calling out to her. At first, she seems to only see him, but then her eyes light on Elwing, and those eyes flash with something uncomfortable, though however much discomfort they cause Elwing, they seem to cause the bearer even more. “Is this—“

And at that, Olwë’s hand settles upon Elwing’s shoulder. Elwing jumps a little at the sudden touch, barely swallowing back a ridiculously panicked little noise. His hand is heavy upon her shoulder, but shaking a little, as well. “This is Elwing,” he tells his wife, with the awkwardness of a man who does not seem to think that such an introduction would ever be necessary, to _anyone_.

Elwing isn’t the only one who’s been caught flat-footed lately, it would seem.

Ránelindë tries to smile, and is a little more successful at it than her husband, though her smile wobbles like it’s trying not to break into a sob. “You are Elwing, then? Do you know, I never expected Elwë to have any descendants so short.”

If that is… if that is supposed to be some sort of test, it’s less subtle than Elwing had thought the tests would be. She links her hands behind her back to hide their shaking, and mumbles something about how children with no parents tend not to thrive as their peers do. It is possible they do not know this. Ennor was hardly a safe place when they lived in it, but the state of affairs by the Waters of Awakening and later on the long trek to the Sea were such that if an orphan or two or thousands grew up among the wider communities of the Edhil, it would certainly have been possible to put their poor state down to something other than the lack of nourishment that only a parent could provide. And here in Aman, there have been few, very few children who have grown up without parents. They might not know.

They might not have known, but the looks that come over their fair faces are such that Elwing thinks they might also have been happier not knowing. She suspects that many Edhil here will be happier having not known the realities of life in Ennor by the time she has finished her many tales, though in the case of these two… Well. Perhaps she should have softened the blow, just a little. It is a poor way to treat your kin, even if you are not entirely sure yet what it is that they require of you.

As it stands, the silence that descends is a taut, strained one, the sort of silence Elwing expects to hear give way to the tremendous screeching of tearing metal. Neither Olwë nor Ránelindë say a word, and Elwing does not think it would be right to break a silence that she herself imposed. She keeps what words she has to herself.

It’s Ránelindë who finally ventures to put an end to the weighty silence. She sets her hand on the handle of the door, abalone gleaming wetly from between her splayed fingers. “Why don’t you come inside? There’s a table prepared for the three of us.”

Elwing blinks. “There… there is much you must know. I have so much I need to—“

“Later, Elwing,” Olwë tells her firmly. Ránelindë opens the door, and Olwë sets a hand between her shoulders, gently ushering her inside. “Eat first. You look as if you haven’t eaten well in months.”

 _Eat…_ What they do not know is that by what is most likely to be their standard of ‘well,’ Elwing has never eaten well. Not for as long as she can remember. There were feasts in Doriath, but she can no longer remember them. She never could remember them. They’ll know eventually. She’ll have to tell them, eventually. The whole story must surge from her mouth, eventually, and Elwing must watch the way their faces will surely fall and contort. Eventually.

Not now.

For now, Elwing has been promised food—a small, incomplete respite to the pain in her stomach before the great plunge, she supposes. She will take it, before she gives out the tale.

The room she is ushered into is quite small, compared to the vastness that is the palace as a whole. There is furniture—a few tables, a few large, long, cushioned chairs she will later learn are called sofas, chairs set around the tables, and so on—but it is plain to Elwing that there is no feasting hall. Neither the room nor any of the tables within are large enough for that, and there is something about the air that makes it seem more personal than that. This does not seem like a place where a crowd has ever gathered.

There are three windows in the room, all in a row. Panes of painted glass cast light of all hues dancing across the room, pink and golden and scarlet and turquoise and deep, deep violet, a violet so dark that it is nearly black to Elwing’s eyes. That light falls on a single table in particular, a table with three chairs set around it, and dishes covered with silver caps clustered all about it.

“This will be quite plain,” Ránelindë says, more practical than apologetic. “Feasts will have to wait until the cooks have had enough time to make a feast.”

“And we didn’t think you wanted to spend your first mealtime here being gawked at,” Olwë added, more guilty than gentle. “Or being pestered by anyone too impatient to hear your tale to let you eat in peace.”

Elwing stands numbly back as the two of them take the covers from the dishes, words absent not only from her mouth but from her mind. Her eyes are fixed on the food now within plain sight, gleaming in the stained and waning daylight.

It’s not… it’s not like the tales others have told her, of feasts in Menegroth and Gondolin. It could never have been, for this is not a feasting hall, that is not a feasting table that the food has been set upon, and by these two distant kin of hers—great-great uncle and aunt, she thinks the correct term would be, the aunt and uncle of her miraculous grandmother—there hasn’t been enough time to put together a real feast, anyways. (That was never something she thought to ask about, long ago when she still begged for stories of feasts. She never thought about how long it might take to prepare one.) It’s not a grand feast, and it never could be.

A bottle of pinkish wine sits at the far left-hand side of the table, accompanied by three glass goblets. A loaf of bread sits on a platter close by it, paired with a little bowl of cream; the bread is fresh and likely still warm, and its sweet, earthy aroma drifts over to set a new fire in Elwing’s already burning stomach. A single pie sits at the center of the table, surrounded by a small bowl with boiled eggs floating in some glittery golden sauce, a bowl with roasted carrots all arrayed around the rim, and a dish piled high with—Elwing finds words long enough to stop and count—eight tarts swollen with some bluish-black filling that gleams as if still wet.

“It…” Elwing finds her voice to speak, only to realize that the screams welling inside of her have found her voice, too. In the effort to keep them down, her voice ends up sounding rather faint. “It looks wonderful.”

For the life of her, she could never have told you later which one of them said “I’m glad.”

They all gather around the table, Olwë setting their plates and their goblets, and the whole thing feels so much like parents eating with their child that Elwing has to shove down a fresh set of screams. By the time he’s finished, her plate has been piled high with a little bit of everything, and the food shows no sign of sinking out of existence, though to Elwing this all manages to feel like some torturous dream, one she will wake from at any moment.

She takes a bite of the pie. A burst of flavor, savory crust seasoned with something sharp whose name she does not know and filled with some sort of meat Elwing has not eaten before but is certainly not fish, all but explodes on her tongue, and its heaviness in her throat as she swallows is not something she thinks a dream could ever manufacture.

Elwing eats, and eats, and eats, each flavor new on her tongue, each bite so rich in her mouth that even without a single sip of wine, her head is spinning as if she’s downed the whole bottle singlehandedly. All the while, Olwë and Ránelindë watch her, and she never looks up to mark the look on their faces, but she can feel their stares upon her as a physical weight, ever questioning.

Elwing eats and eats and eats, eats until she cannot anymore, not because her plate is empty, but because her eyes are streaming and her hands are shaking and a sob is kicking at the gate of her teeth, demanding to be set loose. She reaches up to wipe her eyes, but the tears keep coming, and soon she’s stuffing her hand in her mouth to choke and the sobs that escape her lips as whimpers, defiant of any dignity she might claim. Olwë springs up from his chair and in a moment he’s at her side, his hands on her shoulders. “Are you alright?” he asks her urgently. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Elwing croaks, after a long moment when nothing can fit into her mouth but the rasping, scraping echo of a scream. “I’m fine. It’s… it’s good.”

The pain in her stomach is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhil** —Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Falathrim** —‘People of the foaming shore’ (Sindarin) or ‘Coast people’ (Sindarin); the Sindar of the Havens of the Falas in Beleriand; Círdan’s people.  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lindar** —‘Singers’; the clan name the Nelyar gave themselves (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. The Lindar (later known to outsiders as the Teleri) split into several groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Mínil** —the Sindarin variant of Quenya ‘Minyar’, the name the Vanyar applied to themselves (singular: Miniel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Nelyar** —‘Thirds’, the third clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen, who were named for Enel and Enelyë, the former of whom was the third Elf to awaken (Singular: Nelya) (Adjectival form: Nelyarin). The clan name they gave themselves was ‘Lindar’, meaning ‘Singers’ (rendered in Telerin as ‘Lindai’; rendered in Primitive Quendian as ‘lindā’ or ‘glindā, though the latter appears only in Sindarin), for it was said that they learned to sing before they learned to speak. During the Great March, they were dubbed the Teleri, ‘those at the end of the line, the hindmost’, for they were the last to leave Cuiviénen, and often lagged behind. This clan encompasses many different groups: the Falmari of Aman, the Sindar, and the Nandor (Which itself encompasses the Laiquendi and the Silvan-folk).  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


End file.
